Dinosaur Quarry

Exhibit hall where the dinosaur bones are

What an unusual day we had yesterday.  Not far from our campground is the Dinosaur National Monument, a 210,000 acre park that is designated to protect the dinosaur quarry found here.  It is one thing to see a dinosaur in a museum but somehow doesn't hit home or seem real.  We had to take a trolley to the exhibit hall, a building to enclose the wall where the original excavation was, because the parking capability isn't adequate for the amount of visitors. But standing inside the quarry exhibit hall and seeing REAL dinosaur bones - well, that's something else. And not just a couple of bones - thousands in one place.  The bones have been carbon dated to 223 million years ago - I can't even fathom how long this is. The discovery of these relics came in 1909 when paleontologist Earl Douglass began excavating the fossils. Douglass extracted 20 complete skeletons and 10 species of dinosaurs which are now displayed in museums throughout the country. And just recently when a geology team was doing some study of the earth here,  they found a new species of dinosaur that they don't know what it looks like or how big - all they have is it's head and about 3 feet of it's neck.  I don't know if they are going to try to get to the rest of it's body or not.

Look closely - see the bones?

One of the exhibits in the hall was excellent in pointing out how these bones got into one location - all jumbled up.  223 mya this area was a savanna, plush, had a wide river, lots of foliage and dinosaurs roaming, coming to the river to drink, fight among each other, some dying right there. Some event happened and there was a huge flood, causing the bones of the dead as well as those that probably drowned, to wash down the flooded river and get snagged, just like today a flood would cause a jam if debris were caught.  Then the scientists say that mud washed over the bones, encasing them, and millions of years go by, more deposits from floods, etc.  Add to this the event of the mountains forming, pushing up the land which is what happened in this area - huge cliffs of crystalized mud shoot up about a mile, looks like they are tilting up on a 45 degree line.

Split Mountain and Green River

Dave overhead a conversation with a volunteer park ranger and the conversation was thus, "people actually break down and cry when the come here, they are so overwhelmed to see real bones still enclosed in mud".  I heard a couple of boys come into the hall and gave out a huge - WOW! We definitely know our great nephew, Cody, would absolutely love this place.

We walked the Fossil Discovery Trail which started outside the exhibition hall and meandered in the quarry for about a mile and showed you different fossils still intact in the quarry.  You can see these fossils and bones without too much imagination.  Well marked.

Petroglyphs on rocks

After walking the trail we took the audio car tour along about 10 miles of the park.  It took us by pictographs (paintings on the rock) and petroglyphs (scratched or carved designs) which have been dated to over 7000 years ago.  Then further on down we saw Split Mountain where the Green River actually carved into the mountain and caused the Uinta Mountains here to split in half.  Very pretty.

A good day outside walking the trails.  And very pretty - and green! - seeing the Green River meander through the Uinta Mountains.