On August 15 I went to the Dinosaur National Monument. The park is in both Utah and Colorado. You can not start in Utah drive through Colorado and back, the are separate, so I decided to just see the Utah side because that is where the dinosaur fossils are.
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| Utah |
The fossils were discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass at the Carnegie Quarry, they were then housed in a 80-acre park. Today the park is 210,000 acres; "you can explore the quarry and the scenic and historic Green and Yampa rivers--their canyons, mountains, basins, and archaeological sites--and 23 colorful rock layers of the Colorado Plateau."
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| Vernal, UT |
On the Colorado side the street names are all dinosaur names and the city of Vernal had a ton of dinosaur statues.
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| Wall of Bones |
There are over 1500 dinosaur bones still in the ground and only partially dug up with a building surrounding them. I asked the park ranger if they were ever going to dig them up completely and he said probably not, they started digging them up and just decided to stop there.
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| Allosaurus |
There is also the Fossil Discovery Trail, it is about a mile and a half. You can see different fossils on the walk. Stump Formation: belemnites (squid-like sea creatures), snails, ammonites, and bones of an ichthyosaur (giant marine reptile that resembled a modern dolphin). Morrison Formation: fossil fragments of dinosaurs including vertebrae, humerus, and a femur. Mowry Shale: fish scales.
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| View from the museum |
I walked the trail twice and did not see the dinosaur bones or the sea fossils, but they are there because the old guy passing me tried to describe to me where they were.
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