Remember splashing in the creek bed on a hot summer day? Think bigger.
“The exposed fossil beds here date from way before dinosaurs — more than 400 million years ago,” says Bett Etenohan, a naturalist at The Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana.
“In the dry summer months more than 200 acres of fossil rock can be explored, but call ahead to check river levels.”
High on a bluff above the Ohio River, Indiana State Parks built a large nature center as the focus for activities such as fossil hunting, bird watching — the park lies within the 1,400-acre Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area — and studies of river ecology.
“We host many school groups, so we always have extra buckets and water bottles to lend to families who want to explore the river bed,” says Etenohan. “Splashing a bucket full of river water on the limestone makes the fossils more visible for photographs.”
The rule is, you can take photos, but you can’t take away any of the federally protected fossils.
“We know kids love to have a souvenir, so we have rock piles at the end of the parking lot,” says Etenohan. “They can search limestone rocks from nearby quarries to find their fossil treasure or something sparkly [and] crystal-like among the rocks from an Illinois fluorite mine.”
In the nature center you can watch a 14-minute video presentation about the natural history of the falls and visit the museum to learn more about the birds, fish and other wildlife common to the area.