Dinosaur National Monument

We drove out to Dinosaur National Monument’s Quarry Visitor Center near Jensen, UT. It was about a 3-hour drive east of Salt Lake City.

The views were beautiful on the drive into the park and from the visitor center parking lot.

The first dinosaur bones were found in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working for Carnegie Museum. He and his crew began excavating after they discovered four spine bones sticking up from the ground. Once they began digging they found thousands in a very small area.

From the visitor center there is a free tram that will take you to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, site of the dinosaur bones. The tram runs during the summer. In the Fall, Winter and Spring Park Rangers will lead cars up to the site.

According to the information we read, “Many fossils are embedded in a sloping rock formation that was once a sandbar on the edge of a large river. As the river carried animal carcasses downstream, many became stuck on the sandbar, which eventually turned to rock. As a result, fossils from hundreds of creatures are concentrated in a small area.” So, basically, this is the site where there was once a log jam of dinosaurs and other animals.

We only spent a couple of hours exploring this National Monument. However, the park is spread over 210,000 acres (about 85,000 hectares) across Utah and Colorado. If you want to see Dinosaur Fossils, go the Quarry Visitor Center in Utah. If you are interested in seeing some spectacular canyon scenery, then head over to the Colorado side of the park.