21. Visit the Dinosaur National Monument

A report on one of my items from my 30-before-30 bucket list.


Saturday, July 19, 2014
Although Vernal could have easily been an overnight adventure, one-day adventures are a little easier to accomplish, so we made it happen.

We left early Saturday and drove to Vernal. It's about 3 and a half hours there. We first went to the temple to check that temple off our lists. (Ashley and I both want to visit all the Utah temples this year).

Then we headed up to the Dinosaur National Monument. Turns out the monument itself is HUGE. We really only got to see a sliver of it. But it was a sliver with a lot of bones, so that made it ok.

The Fossil Bone Quary Exhibit Hall is a building built over bones that are still in the rock.

All the bones have been labeled and cataloged, but if they were excavated, they would simply sit in a box in the back of some museum. This way people can enjoy them in their semi-natural state. 

Also, the guy who discovered this quarry, Earl Douglass, was really hopeful that bones could somehow be displayed this way:

"I hope that the government, for the benefit of science and the people, will uncover a large area, leave the bones and skeletons in relief and house them in; it would make one of the most astounding and instructive sights imaginable."

How cool that he got his wish.

Now, for some things I learned:

• Dinosaurs died here because of drought. This was likely a river that dried up, and as it dried up, dinosaurs died here. Their bones were all collected in one place after a flood, and mixed up and covered in sedimentary rock, which is why they are all over the place.
• A dinosaur fossil is considered "complete" if it has at least 40 % of the bones. That's less than half. But ear bones and other small bones rarely if every survive, so they never expect to have all of them.
• Additionally, a skull is one of the most rare bones to find in tact, as it is hollow and easily broken.
• Long-neck dinosaurs did not lift up their heads like giraffes and eat from trees. Rather their long necks were so they could graze across a long area of grass without moving their bodies. Talk about lazy!
• Also, long-neck dinosaurs were protected from predators mainly by their sheer size, since they were so much bigger than any other dinosaurs. They didn't need any other protection.

Enough of the science lesson, here are some photos:

*not a real dinosaur

on the tram to the exhibit

* a real [dead] dinosaur

We saw some petroglyphs as well.

The weather was perfect for the fossil hike in the desert. Warm but overcast.

Another great adventure for the books. Thanks to Rushley and Eliza for joining me on a long wonderful day!