Lybrook Fossil Area

Lybrook Badlands
The Lybrook landscape is a colorful spectrum of southwestern earth tones, ranging from yellow, brown, pink, and purple to stark, tall hills of layered black and white. The region is a visual cornucopia of peculiar rock formations, including tall spires, hefty hoodoos, towering caprocks, and other bizarre geologic specimens. It is a glorious place for geology geeks.

Over millions of years wind and water erosion have stripped the surrounding landscape’s epidermal layer, sculpting a stark, off-world, fantasy-land of stone. Many of the hoodoos in Lybrook are larger, taller, and thicker than hoodoos found in other badlands in the basin. It looks like something out of Star Wars. Tatooine to be precise.

The terrain in the Lybrook Badlands is rugged, with colorful cliffs providing a picturesque backdrop in all directions. There is more vegetation than the Bisti, which attracts a lot of wildlife. For example, Lybrook is a bit of a birdwatcher’s haven; home to ferruginous and red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, piñon jays, ravens, prairie falcons, quail, morning doves, and ground dwelling burrowing owls. The owls take over abandoned Gunnison prairie dog burrows. In terms of larger mammals, reptiles, and assorted critters, there are elk, deer, rabbits, coyotes, badgers, various lizards, snakes (including rattlesnakes), tarantulas and scorpions.
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