AWESOME People and Dinosaur Stories at National Monument in Utah!

Pat along the Fossil Discovery Trail

Pat in front of model of Stegosaurus

Stark Beauty of Dinosaur National Park

Bones! Bones! We traveled through 150 million years of cultural (1000 years), ecological, geological and Earth's biodiversity yesterday along the Fossil Discovery Trail and Quarry Exhibit at Dinosaur National Monument. So many rock layers of different colors, textures and fossil framents, if we had been alive we would have walked through fern forests, under fresh water rivers and shallow oceans. The tectonic forces exposed 23 layers and formations including Stump, Morrison, Cedar Mountain, Dakota and Weber Sandstone, Frontier, Mowry and Mancos Shales and the walk took us through Jurassic to Cretaceous times. 

You have to be very skilled to spot a bone.

 The Quarry was fascinating because all these different bones of dinosaurs ended up in a hole being swept down during times of of floods.  The dinosaurs had died during times of drought and been buried.  There were Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, Camarasaurus and many many more. 

Allosaurus  Skeleton

Pat in the Quarry

  










 

See the vertebrae ?

 Human history was just as interesting as the geological and ecological history.  It started 1000-1250 years ago with the Fremont Utes hunting and living in this area.  See their petroglyphs and pictographs below. Really superior to what we saw last year at Capitol Reef.  If I have time I will write more about their culture.
The neatest stories is about Roy the cowboy and Josie Bassett Morris.  Roy learned how to write his name, unusual for people in area, and rode his horse through the area a 100 years ago and wrote his name on many of the petroglyphs. Josie was a woman who grew up on the frontier on a ranch which Butch Cassidy stayed at for awhile, married 5 times and divorced, unheard of in those times, built a cabin near a creek in 1913 at the age of 40 (two years before Dinosaur National Monument became a protected area).  She lived there for 50 years and died in 1964 near the age of 90.  Twice she was tried for cattle rustling and aquitted, but most people admired her because of her independence.  She lived off the land, grew her own fruit and vegetables, raised chickens and other livestock.  People visited her during prohibition times for her chokecherry wine.
 

Green River Campground in Dinosaur