Our studies indicate a Tertiary age for silicified palm roots and wood from near Redmond, Utah, recently described as the first unequivocal angiosperms from pre‐Cretaceous strata. Field relationships and petrographic analysis demonstrate that the rocks in which the palm roots occur in place, supposedly beds of the Jurassic Arapien Shale, are actually strata of the Dipping Vat Formation of middle Tertiary age. The type and only localities of the palm woods designated as Palmoxylon pristina Tidwell and P. simperi Tidwell are on the Arapien Shale; however, unequivocal evidence that the specimens were in place is lacking. Both of these localities are situated on drainages topographically below an angularly unconformable Tertiary sequence including the Dipping Vat Formation. In the immediate area the Dipping Vat Formation contains abundant in situ palm wood and roots. Slump blocks of this sequence, some of them containing palm material, were found in the vicinity of both type localities. Sections of palm wood from the Dipping Vat Formation display the same anatomical features that characterize Palmoxylon pristina and P. simperi, including such characteristic attributes as the presence of fiber strands in the ground tissue. The probability that woods of P. pristina and P. simperi, rather than having originated in the Arapien Shale, were transported from the Dipping Vat Formation during post‐Tertiary erosion makes a Jurassic age for these fossil angiosperms insupportable.