dinosaurs and more

Dinosaur National Monument, Utah

Back in Utah again to see dinosaur national monument. We camped along the Green River and again I must say Utah has more than its fair share of absolutely glorious natural features. I think so many of us are totally unaware of its beauty.

Dinosaur National Monument has one of the world's most outstanding collections of dinosaur bones ever found in one place. There were several nearly complete skeletons with articulated bones (ie the bones were connected in order), the largest collection of stegosaurus bones ever found, dinosaurs that had never been identified before, big dinosaurs and little dinosaurs all jumbled together. This amassment of bones is believed to have accumulated in a log jam in an ancient river that dinosaurs used as a source of water, for hunting and where they died. During droughts many dinosaurs died around the river and when the river flooded, their bones were washed into the river. The bones became fossilized in this sandstone sediment called the Morrison formation which is from the late Jurassic period.

Much, much later, after weight and pressure built up turning the mud, gravel and sand into rock, there was an uplift and the area that had been a riverbed now was incorporated into a steep hillside. Jump ahead many, many years and with accompanying erosion, a few of the fossilized bones started to show near the surface and were discovered by Earl Douglas, a paleontologist from the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Currently, there is only one other similar collection of dinosaur bones that have been found, the Yixian Formation in northern China. Interestingly, although these bones were found earlier (during WW II by the Japanese) it wasn't excavated and studied until the 1990s.

The bones are primarily located on a partially excavated wall of a hillside that the National Park has enclosed to prevent more weathering and damage. The wall is 150' wide and two stories tall. There are two levels of viewing platforms that run the entire length of the wall and you can just stand there for hours looking at all the bones, trying to imagine what part of a dinosaur it came from, how it relates to human bones and what adaptations have been made to accommodate different functions between the dinosaur and the human. Just fascinating.

But, the dinosaurs are just one, dare I say small, (tee-hee), part of Dinosaur National Monument. There is so much more!

On to pics ...

vertebrae and a tooth or maybe a small stegosaurus plate ??

articulated vertebrae (bones of the spine connected in appropriate order)

this is either a collar or shoulder bone (dinosaur bones don't look exact like human bones 🙄)

another stegosaurus plate (the thingies that stick off along their backs), I know it's kind of hard to see, but they are an extremely rare find

more vertebrae, some articulated, some separated so you can really appreciate their drum-like nature

The quarry wall has over 1500 fossilized dinosaur bones from the Morrison period exposed for observation and in a few places visitors can actually touch a few of the bones. I touched dinosaur bones!

This pic was part of the display at the quarry. I just thought it was priceless. The difference in reactions between the obvious delight of the boy and either wide eyed wonder or shear terror by the little girl were just too funny for words.

caption this photo

But Dinosaur Monument has much more than just dinosaur bones …

It has incredible petroglyphs

and turkeys soaking in the last of the sun as evening shadows filter in.

lilacs around old homesteads,

tricolor bumble bees busily working the wildflowers

and desert mallow

and burgundy red clarit cup cactus blossoms

It is widely believed that the early indigenous of this area lived well. So well, that they were able to spend a considerable amount of time on art, perhaps for sacred and ceremonial purposes, tribal and clan recognition, maybe purely for the sake of art and decoration or for all those reasons. At least one thing is clear, these peoples did not have to spend all of their time in the subsistence of life, hunting and gathering food and finding shelter, they had time for more.

speaking of more, here are more petroglyphs

This is a famous petroglyph because of its precision, (note how precisely the entire inside of the object is chipped out, not just an outline), and its size, (it's over 5’ long).

(For this pic I'm about ⅓ of the way up the trail, Martin is on an outcropping ⅔ of the way up)

They achieved such details

(remember the design of this petroglyph, it'll come up in another pic later)

Sometimes it's hard to remember that their canvas is a cliff face and their paintbrush was a hand held rock

If you look closely at the pic below. Check the slightly darker semi-circle rock face just to the left of the bottom center. That is one of the cliff faces with some of the petroglyphs I've taken close-ups of.

Dinosaur NM also has a river running through it, the Green River. Our campsite was along this river. (Green? You say…I know, it looks pretty brown in this pic, but really, its name is Green River)

some surrounding landscape

and desert bunnies

and this orange lichen which only grows where the air quality is high. Several parks use it as an indicator species of air quality.

We went on some spectacular hikes

striped skies mirroring the striped hillsides

As we turned a corner one whole hillside was covered with this bizarre plant. I was convinced that we had either moved to the moon or this was totally a remnant from a time when this land was under the sea.

Note: remember the petroglyph I asked you to remember? I think it is a "still life" of one of these plants in a jug or clay pot. Am I crazy or does anyone else see the resemblance???

fresh green leaves of cottonwoods line a stream

hiking down slick rock (it's not really slick, they just call it that. It actually has quite a good grip)

different rocks border each other

I was fascinated by not only the greens of the cottonwoods, always showing the location of streams and water, but the dusty gray green sparse grass that covered many of the hillsides in the early spring.