Visiting the Carol Site

Thursday I had a chance to revisit one of my favorite sites that I spent much time at, the Carol site found by Carol and Raymal Jones currently living in Castle Dale. Carol found the site and Ray developed technology to locate bones beneath the surface of the ground. Two new dinosaurs were discovered at this site. The type specimens for Eolambia caroljonesi and Animantarx raymaljones came from this site. Both type specimens are housed in the collections at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. The Animantarx has been molded and cast and is on display. Plans are in the works to mold and cast the Eolambia.

Yesterday, Dr. Brooks Britt from BYU and his student Hero and I visited the site not to check for bones, but to find sedimentalogical evidence for the age of the fossil bones. Dr. Britt and Hero are working on a paper correlating the dates of the different quarries in the Cedar Mountain Formation. This will help us in knowing when the animals lived in relationship to each other.

We hiked around the area noting paleosols. These are ancient soil horizons. We measured sections and thicknesses of channel sands. These are sandstone layers laid down by stream deposits.

As we walked we enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the San Rafael Swell and the great variety of wildflowers that are in bloom. All in all we had a great day. Brooks and Hero left with several bags of sediment that they hoped would contain materials that they could use for dating and it’s always great to be with old friends.

Back in the Lab

Last Friday the Purdue Crew prepped out many of the bones we excavated from EO2 and this week, I’ve been preparing the prepped bones to be catalogued and working on a few others.

The bones from EO2 are, for the most part, well preserved and easy to prep out for study. One of the more interesting bones is a brain-case from a sub-adult Eolambia.

This is only the second brain case we have from Eolambia. The first is the type specimen from the Carol site found in the mid 90’s.

Our new brain-case is smaller and in better condition and if all goes well, I will finish prepping it out today.

The Eolambia collection we have is very important and unusual because we have Eolambia ranging from very small to adult. This collection can be used to do growth studies.

Most dinosaurs are known from a limited number of specimens and growth studies are impossible on most genera.

Paleo Dude Blown Away!

This week in the field a group from Purdue University under the direction of Dr. Rich Hengst helped us at the Eolambia 2 site. These low-landers come from an area about 600 foot elevation and found the air a bit thin at 6,000 feet. The hike down to the quarry was always easy, but the breathing was pretty hard coming back up. We started out Monday from the museum in Price, Utah. Stopped at the Grub Box in Ferron for lunch and arrived at the quarry two-ish.

The wind was blowing quite briskly so we hiked around the area looking at the different fossil sites and talking about some of the geology. The evening was cold, and with the chill factor, was near freezing. The next day, Tuesday, the weather looked better and after a gourmet breakfast prepared by Chef Hengst, we started working the quarry.

At first we had to work the overburden back and then began working the quarry down to the bone bed and found a few bones that day. In the evening, we hiked over to an ancient campsite where prehistoric man had once camped and looked at some of the artifacts on the ground. Of course we left them where they lay. Then we hiked over to a petroglyph panel accessed through a narrow crack in a large boulder.

At this time, the sun was low on the horizon and the colors of the valley below us were magnificent. The second night was a bit warmer and we woke up the next day to beautiful weather, unfortunately the wind found us again but the day was warm. That day we excavated 48 more bones from Eolambia. Several skull bones were found and excavated. We put a plaster jacket around a braincase and were able to remove that intact.

The evening was warm yet still breezy and conversation was fun and friendships grew. Thursday, time to break camp and then we headed out on our geology tour. This followed the route we had covered last week. The Crew from Purdue enjoyed playing on the sand dune and getting sand in places that should not contain sand.

After that we visited one of Butch Cassidy’s campsites where his name has been written on the rock in axel grease and can be still seen today. There we also talked about geology, the formations and how they were created.

Next we stopped at some dikes and a gypsum quarry. The wildflowers were out in abundance and added to the natural beauty. We continued following the same route as last week. This time, however, we surprised a herd of wild horses! Most of the Purdue Crew had never been four wheeling on back roads and found the experience to be exciting and enjoyable.

We finally reached I-70 and headed up the Moore Cut-Off Road to visit the newly discovered dinosaur tracks and then home after a stop at Gilly’s in Ferron for ice cream. And we all looked forward to a very long, hot shower.

Paleo Dude in Devil’s Canyon

Yesterday was heaven in Devil's Canyon. It was great weather, cool breeze, the sun was shining. We were south of I-70. We started by checking out the sand dune near Willow Springs. It's a fun sand dune that fortunately has not been discovered by many people.

From there we headed south east into the Dike's area.The Dike's area was created during the Miocene epic when magma forced itself up through cracks in the earth and flowed along surfaces and then cooled and solidified. Since then the softer sediments have eroded away and left the hard, cooled magma which creates beautiful monoliths, walls and horizontal deposits that have weathered into hexagonal columnar deposits. These create great viewing opportunities.

Being short of time, we left there and went up into the Cat Canyon area. This is a shallow canyon that is rich in selenite. Selenite is a clear form of gypsum and some pieces can be seen through similar to glass. In this area, the selenite crystals formed six foot high boulders, very impressive!

Following the road further, (most of the road followed the bottom of the stream channel) we entered the Copper Globe Mining area. In the early 1900's mining operations were in full swing. Unfortunately, for the miners, the copper deposit wasn't rich enough to be profitable. As you visit the area today, deposits of low grade azurite can be seen scattered around on the surface. Two of the mine portals are still open and a couple of the buildings still standing. The formation of the area is Navajo sandstone, which is formed by an ancient desert. The sand dunes of this ancient desert are now lithified into huge majestic formations. The Copper Globe Mine is at the base of these rockified sand dunes. This is a beautiful area.

Continuing east we entered the Devil's Canyon area of deep canyons, high cliffs and narrow, rough roads. These cliffs are formed in a very thick deposit of Navajo sandstone. Weathering of wind and water has created some beautiful scenery. Well-named this is not a place to enter unprepared.

Leaving the Devils' Canyon area and crossing I-70, we followed the Moore Cutoff road north. Recent road construction had uncovered dinosaur tracks in the Morrison Formation. These are last Jurassic in age. There are sauropod, ornithopod and theropods tracks that can be seen. They also have insect burrows running through the ancient mud around them. Alden Hamblin was the consulting paleontologist on the project that recognized the tracks and had them set aside to preserve them. After that, the day was spent and we headed home.