No Bones About It

For the past year or more our museum has been preparing for reaccreditation. This happens every ten years and we are quite proud that a museum as small as ours and as understaffed and remote as ours has been able to maintain this prestigious status. Last week, we were visited by two museum people. Their task was to inspect our facilities and interview our staff and others and then to determine if we are still worthy of this rating. I believe everything went well. Unfortunately, their final report will not be finished for a couple of months.

Accreditation of any museum is determined by the many aspects of that museum and how their policies, procedures and practices measure up against museum standards that have been developed over many years. Some of these are security and care of the collections, qualified staff members to perform the duties needed, and a proper functioning organization capable of maintaining the museum and its standards. Since we first were accredited in the early 90’s, the staff, the directors and volunteers have worked very hard to maintain and improve where possible the policies, procedures, storage facilities and working conditions of the museum. So, I am hopeful of a very good report and I believe we will be reaccredited for another ten years.
Now to the fun stuff. Went out surveying again this week through an area I had not been before. This area is just north of the Moore Cut-off Road in the Cedar Mountain Formation. Before we headed up for the survey we did make a stop at the tracks we had stopped at before and showed the volunteers that were with me the tracks.

We began surveying the Cedar Mountain Formation in an area where the exposure was very limited and although we did not find any bone, we did find some petrified wood weathering out of the Dakota. The Dakota sits on top of the Cedar Mountain and was created as the waters of the Mancos Sea began to spread up through North America. In short these are shoreline deposits.
Marvin Evans mentioned he knew of some rock art nearby in Short Canyon. It was about lunch time so we decided to eat lunch in Short Canyon and then visit the rock art. Along the road into Short Canyon, along the cliffs, are embedded large round concretions. We found them very interesting and jokingly theorized that they were cannonballs left over from a great dinosaur battle.

After lunch, we began walking further up the canyon and Marvin pointed out rock art as we walked along. The sandstone boulders that had come down from the top had very interesting weathering patterns and we enjoyed talking about what they looked like. Some became works of art by famous sculptors and others were ancient monsters.

At the head of the canyon were the most interesting petroglyphs. One panel had red painted figures and later someone picked petroglyphs over the top of them. A little further around the cliff were two Barrier Canyon style figures. On our way back, we located a couple more panels of rock art.

Driving further north we stopped and checked out the Cedar Mountain Formation in that area and other than a few pretty rocks, and a flock of Chukars, we didn’t find anything. The day was waning and we decided to continue north in the hopes that our road would connect with another road that would take us back out. While traveling, we noticed several other areas that looked promising and hopefully we will get back soon to survey those areas. We did connect up with a graveled, graded road that took us to Clawson and Highway 10.
We all considered the day a great success even if all we found was rock art, cannonballs and no bones about it.

Elections and Dinosaur Bones

We live in a great nation. We just finished a hard fought battle between two patriots. They and the current president have set a great example for all of us. Although they differ in ideas and ways of governing our nation, they are working together for the best interest of our country. I’m glad I live in a nation where we settle our differences with words and the voice of the people and not with guns and violence. I’m proud to be an American.

Friday, November 7^th, Reese Barrick, our museum director and paleontologist and I met up with Ray Jones in Castle Dale, Utah. Ray has worked with the museum since the early 90’s. He and his wife Carol are responsible for finding two of our newly discovered dinosaurs. They have retired in Ray’s home town of Castle Dale but continue to be active with our museum and the Museum of the San Rafael.

The three of us headed out to the Moore cut off to visit the tracks that were discovered this last summer. We had another great day, perfect for picture taking. The sun this time of year is lower on the horizon and the relief on the tracks made for great pictures. Over the past few months, the wind and rain has cleaned the tracks off and the detail is better. The tracks represent several types of dinosaurs, small sauropods, a small theropod and an iguanodontid, possibly Camptosaur, because these tracks are from the late Jurassic. The tracks have burrows criss-crossing through them and the matrix around them.

Ray mentioned he knew of a bone site nearby the tracks and we decided to visit the site and record it. It had been a few years since Ray had been to this site and it took us a while but we found it. The bones are situated in the deposits of an ancient stream channel. The deposit is cross bedded with coarse to fine sandstone. The exposed bones are badly weathered and would be a nightmare to excavate. Ray walked around to the back side of the hill and found that the deposit continued all the way through the hill. Some of the exposed vertebrae contained pleurocoelus, these were air cavities. Today’s birds have similar cavities in their bones making their bones lighter weight giving them a more efficient breathing system than humans. Pleurocoelus indicate these bones may be from a sauropod.

All good things must come to an end. We dropped Ray off at his home in Castle Dale and Reese and I returned to the museum.