Dinosaur National Monument stretches across Utah and Colorado. In 1909 the first dino bone was discovered by Earl Douglass and in 1915 the dinosaur fossil beds were declared a national monument. The boundaries were extended in 1938 by President Woodrow Wilson to include the canyons of the Green and Yampa Rivers. There is an entrance an Visitor’s Center on either side, but they don’t connect.
The dinosaur quarry is on the Utah side near Jensen, Utah. This is the Green River. It helped carve the canyons of this park. There is a Green River, Wyoming and a Green River, Utah. That’s because it starts in Wyoming, meanders into Colorado (in this park) and then through Utah, where it becomes the chief tributary of the Colorado River.
150 million years ago, there was an ancient river here also. Dinosaurs came here to drink. But when a terrible drought occurred, they came to drink but there was no water and they perished here. When the rains finally came, floodwaters carried their bones downstream. At some point, exactly where this quarry is, there was a dinosaur bone log jam. As the bones were covered up by sand and mud, and later millions of years of layers of debris, those bones became fossilized in rock. That layer with the bones is what is now known as the Morrison Formation and it is part of the Jurassic Period.
Later, these layers of rock were uplifted and tilted during the process that formed the Uinta Mountains 60 million years ago. Then erosion worked its magic to sculpt these foothills and uncovered the bones that Mr. Douglass first saw.
The Quarry Exhibit Hall is built right into the actual wall where the dinosaur bones lay.
This is the second building to protect the dinosaur bone log jam wall. The first one was built in the late 1950s. The soil it was built on sunk and the building developed cracks and it was closed in 2006. Work began to rebuild the Hall with supports going deep into the rock for stability. It was just reopened in 2011.
The wall is two stories high and there are two levels to the viewing hall.
In comparison to the wall, there are small exhibits just at the right level for pint sized visitors.
There are even bones that everyone is invited to touch.
Being carried by the river, the bones became jumbled up, but there are a few groupings.
This is a group of Sauropods (Apatosaurus and Diplodocus).
A Stegosaurus group.
This is a nearly complete Camarasaurus skeleten.
There are bones from seven different types of dinosaurs in this dino jam.
Do you see the criss-crossed bones? That is a Diplodocus Scapula on top of an Apatosaurus Femur.
Here are a few more pictures from the Visitor’s Center and the Dinosaur Quarry.
