September 15, 2012

FOR YEARS CAROLE HAS WANTED TO GO TO DINOSAUR MONUMENT, a 200,000 acre park located in both Utah and Colorado, where tens of thousands of dinosaur bones have been unearthed. The park is only about 12 miles south of Vernal, Utah and we arrived there late in the morning. Our first stop was the Quarry Visitor’s Center. From there, visitors take a shuttle to the quarry wall.  After we departed from the shuttle, we followed a path which had markers telling us how many millions of miles into the past we were walking. Each sign put us additional millions of years in the past. There were also signs warning us to stay on the path. I didn’t need any warning; I had read Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder years ago. I didn’t want to create any “Butterfly Effect.

The quarry wall is a part of the excavations made in the early part of the Twentith Century. Earl Douglass, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who first excavated the site,  was able to convince his employer to leave a large numbers of bone in situ. The result is a long wall, in a covered shed, with nearly 1,500 bones embedded in it. An extremely competent guide explained that we were looking at part of an ancient river bed. The bones in the wall had been washed down river until debris covered them. The different layers in the wall took millions of years to form. To make the bones visable to viewers, it took three men working thirty years to brush away the debris without damaging the bones. I was reminded yet again why paleontology was one of the half dozen or so possible career choices I ended up discarding in college. Our fraternity advisor had been a paleontologist, and had told me how he had spent several summers at various digs working with tooth brushes on rocks. 

Our guide, who we learned was a retired electrical engineer, explained that dinosaur bones are usually found in dry, arid areas.  He explained that dinosaur bones are probably located in many areas, but the potential dig sites are covered by trees, houses and cities. To our surprise, excavations in China and South America are unearthing thousands of dinosaur remains.  In addition to the wall, he talked about several mock ups of dinosaurs which were located on the lower level of the shed. 

After viewing the wall, and after Carole got her Jr. Ranger booklet, we took a drive through the park. At several locations, we were able to view petroglyphs left by the Fremont Indians. Those long-dead Indians would be surprised to know that they were “Fremont” Indians. They were named in honor of John C. Fremont (AKA “The Pathfinder"), an explorer/soldier/presidential candidate, whose greatest accomplishment was marrying the daughter of the brash senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton.  Old Benton, who had the pretentious habit of referring to himself in the third person (“Benton thinks…”), did everything he could to promote the name and career of his son-in-law.

Throughout our drive, we had panoramic views of the Blue Mountains.  At some points, we could see the deceptive power of water: huge mountains cut through by a small river.  There were numerous hiking trails throughout the area, but we figured that we were in such good shape we didn't need the exercise.

We finally found an acceptable solution to our dining issue when we located a New York style deli.