Indian Springs Trace Fossil Natural Area
location of Ordovician animal traces
Indian Springs Trace Fossil Natural Area is a 40-acre privately owned site on the Indian Springs Ranch in Fremont County, Colorado. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1980.
Overview
There are 25 types of trace fossils of horseshoe crab, brachiopods, trilobites and pawless armor-plated fish that lived 450 million years ago in a lagoon. The fossils are set in rock of Harding Formation. It is considered North America's best site of trace fossils because it shows the movement of the ancient animals. Tracks left by the animals walking, swimming and burrowing in what had been a tidal lagoon's mudflat.
The site is located along the Gold Belt Byway on the grounds of the Indians Springs Campground. Owners conduct tours of the fossil site.
Fossil sites
The National Park Service has several sites across the country that protect fossils, which includes trace, plant, vertebrate and invertebrate fossils. The sites are protected for their educational and scientific value.
“Indian Springs Trace Fossil Natural Area” enters the record as location of Ordovician animal traces. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Indian, Springs and Trace can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Indian Springs Trace Fossil Natural Area” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Indian, Springs and Trace provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14684627. Authority coordinates are 38.493, -105.132. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian Springs Trace Fossil Natural Area” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.