Agate Fossil Beds National Monument

Ruthann Knudson

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is a 3,058-acre park that is primarily mixed-grass prairie, but there are small groves of old cottonwoods in the floodplain of the Niobrara River that provide good roosting and foraging habitat for bats. We monitor bats using acoustic recorders to understand their current status and to detect long-term changes in bat populations.

Across six Northern Great Plains parks, education and outreach for bats was conducted.

Every few years, researchers from the University of Wyoming's Biodiversity Institute monitor and study the bat population at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. In 2021, a few lucky junior rangers tagged along and learned how to catch and collect data safely from these amazing mammals. Read what one of them had to say in her article about the experience.

The Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago [MYA] through today) is the "Age of Mammals." North America’s characteristic landscapes began to develop during the Cenozoic. Birds and mammals rose in prominence after the extinction of giant reptiles. Common Cenozoic fossils include cat-like carnivores and early horses, as well as ice age woolly mammoths.

Across the US, changes in water availability are altering which plants grow where. These changes are evident at a broad scale. But not all areas experience the same climate in the same way, even within the boundaries of a single national park. A new dataset gives park managers a valuable tool for understanding why vegetation has changed and how it might change in the future under different climate-change scenarios.

People planted yellow iris and stocked northern pike in the river for beauty and sport. The iris altered the river channel, and the pike ate the native fish.

A mix of large swaths of ungrazed, mixed grass prairie, and the broad floodplains of the Niobrara river, has created wonderful habitat for wetland birds. Land bird surveys have been conducted at Agate Fossil Beds NM since 2012

A solar eclipse is visually stunning, but what will it sound like? NPS scientists will find out by recording sounds in parks across the USA.