Safe Travels: A Nature Podcast

In this episode, I sit down with paleontologist Rebecca Hunt-Foster at Dinosaur National Monument to explore one of the most fascinating fossil landscapes in North America. We discuss the geology that shaped the monument, the incredible dinosaurs that once roamed the region, and what life looked like in this ancient ecosystem roughly 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period.
Rebecca also shares insights into her career path in paleontology, her work with the National Park Service, and what it’s like studying fossils and ancient environments in the American West.

The Geology of Dinosaur National Monument
  •  How the rock layers at Dinosaur National Monument were formed 
  •  Why the Morrison Formation is one of the most important dinosaur-bearing formations in the world 
  •  Ancient rivers, floodplains, and environmental conditions during the Jurassic 
  •  How geologists and paleontologists interpret ancient landscapes from rock and fossil evidence 
Dinosaurs of the Jurassic
  •  The major dinosaur species discovered in the region 
  •  Giant sauropods and massive predators that lived in the ecosystem 
  •  Fossil discoveries that made Dinosaur National Monument famous 
  •  What these animals can tell us about evolution and prehistoric ecosystems 
Reconstructing a 150-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem
  •  What the climate and vegetation looked like during the Late Jurassic 
  •  Ancient waterways and seasonal environments 
  •  Other animals that shared the ecosystem with dinosaurs 
  •  How scientists piece together food webs and habitats from fossil evidence 
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with fellow dinosaur and geology enthusiasts.
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Creators and Guests

Host
Joey Liberatore

What is Safe Travels: A Nature Podcast?

Safe Travels explores National Parks and wild places through in-depth conversations with the people who know them best - park rangers, scientists, biologists, geologists, archaeologists, and conservationists.

Each episode goes beyond travel tips to uncover the science, history, wildlife, and conservation stories that bring these landscapes to life.

Hosted by Joey Liberatore, Safe Travels Pod turns expert insight into engaging, accessible conversations - helping listeners experience public lands with deeper understanding and appreciation.

Speaker 1:

Hi, everyone. Thanks for checking out the Safe Travels Podcast. My name is Joey. Today, we are at Dinosaur National Monument in Northeastern Utah and Northwestern Colorado, and I had the chance to sit down with the park paleontologist, ReBecca Hunt-Foster. Rebecca has had an incredible career in paleontology and in our conversation together, we talk all about the amazing geology of this national monument and we also discuss the dinosaurs that used to roam on this amazing landscape.

Speaker 1:

ReBecca, thanks so much for joining me. I'm really excited to talk to you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

You've had a remarkable career in paleontology. So I'd love to go all the way back to the beginning and and understand where your love for paleontology, dinosaurs, geology all came from.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I always liked being outside. I still like being outside and I always enjoyed being around animals and plants and just nature in general. And so I guess my love of paleontology kind of started there because I just really enjoyed being outside. And my mom was a librarian, my dad is a pastor, And my mom would bring books home from the library for me to read.

Speaker 2:

One year she brought home a paleontology book. And it was something that had never been on my radar. I wasn't a dinosaur enthused kid. And so I started reading on it and realized that sounded like a lot of fun. You could could be outside in nature and learning things, but be inside when it's cold.

Speaker 2:

And so it it seemed like a really fun career the way that the stories were written.

Speaker 1:

When did you first start getting into paleontology professionally? Did it start with school?

Speaker 2:

So when I was probably around 13, I as I started getting more and more interested in it, I I read everything I could consume. This was before the Internet. And so I spent a lot of time in in libraries, reading books and and articles and magazines, anything I could get my hands on. And then I started, writing to paleontologists. I would write them letters.

Speaker 2:

I would type them out letters and mail them. And several of them actually replied. And so that was really, really touching as a kid to have these professionals who had read about actually replying to me and giving me advice early on. And that kind of helped keep me motivated in the science. And I ended up meeting, at the time, the only paleontologist who lived in Arkansas, the only vertebrate paleontologist.

Speaker 2:

And he and I kind of became pen pals. And he would mail me fossils and tell me how to identify them, he would send me publications, he would send me postcards from all of his trips that he went on and letters about what he was doing and it was really really really fabulous. He was a really great mentor.

Speaker 1:

You have also had some incredible career accomplishments in Arkansas including being a part of the official state dinosaur of Arkansas. Can you share that story?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So when I was an undergrad and I was kind of really obsessed with with paleontology and dinosaurs, I had a paleontologist who actually lives and works here in Utah. I met him at my first Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, and he suggested that I work on this ornithomimid fossil that nobody had really ever finished working on that had been discovered and nobody had done anything with. And so I went back to school and went to the museum where I had actually been working in the museum and got to learn more about the fossil. And so I started working on it when I was an undergrad and actually ended up writing my undergrad thesis on that specimen.

Speaker 2:

And then there wasn't a whole lot to compare it to at the time. And so I kind of did what I could do, wrote a a my very first short paper on it, and then just sort of set it aside. And then fast forward like ten, fifteen years later, I'm reading a journal article and realizing, oh, there's a lot more that's been published on ornithmimids at this time. And so I started doing more and more research and realizing we could tell a lot more than what we had. So I went back and borrowed those fossils again and started writing up a more official description of the specimen.

Speaker 2:

And at the same time, there was a high school student in Arkansas who was really excited about wanting there to be a state dinosaur for the state of Arkansas. And and the fossil, ornithomimet fossil at the time, was really all there was known. And so he had he had picked that one, there was action going through the legislature to to establish that. And they had reached out to me. And so I I finally got around to actually naming it, which it had an unofficial name of Arkansaurus fridayi after the individual who had found the fossils, Joe Friday.

Speaker 2:

And so we went ahead and officially established that by publishing it in the scientific literature.

Speaker 1:

And the story of how Joe Friday found it is a good one as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So he was out in his field looking for a lost cow and they had done some roadwork in the area. They had actually used a bulldozer to grab some some gravel out of one of his fields out of a ditch to pave the road. And he was out looking for this cow and saw these bones eroding out of this ditch. And he collected them and thought they were really interesting.

Speaker 2:

He took them back. He had a gas station that he he ran, and this is all in in Southwestern Arkansas. He took those and put them in his gas station and kinda had them on display in his gas station. And a local, a local student saw them, and he was attending the University of Arkansas at that time. And he realized that those were pretty important.

Speaker 2:

So he showed them to his professor, James Quinn, and his professor started working on these fossils. And and the fun thing too is that the student's name was Doy Zachary, and he ends up becoming one of my geology professors at the University of Arkansas. So it's very kind of a full circle moment. So doctor Quinn started working on these fossils and took them to the Society of Vertebrae Paleontology meeting in the seventies and showed them around to some other paleontologists. And then, fortunately, he died in an accident before he could get around to publishing on the fossils.

Speaker 2:

So when I went to finish the paper, when I went to write the official description, we added, doctor Quinn on as, because he had really started the study and started the work on the specimens. So it was kind of an honor to get to work with him even though there was a lot of time separating us.

Speaker 1:

The backstories to a lot of these discoveries and research are always really incredible and touching in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Absolutely. And and I actually got to meet mister Friday and his wife when I was a student and they were just so kind and so nice and and it was a lot of fun to go out and see where the fossils were discovered and get to visit with them.

Speaker 1:

Backing up a little bit, what is an ornithomimid? Ornithomimid?

Speaker 2:

An ornithomimid is is what we would call an ostrich like dinosaur. It's a theropod dinosaur, so it's in the same family as like t rex or allosaurus. But it basically kind of would look like an ostrich with long arms to give you hugs. So they were taller for the most part. Ours ours was a good height, about the size of a a human, a little taller.

Speaker 2:

And, yeah, Just kind of generalist theropods. They didn't have a a mouthful of sharp teeth. They had a beak, later on. Ours is, early Cretaceous in age, so it may have had teeth, but our fossils too were only based on a foot. So that's all we had for this individual was one foot.

Speaker 1:

And how were you able to articulate its life cycle then and determine that it is what it was?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So we were able to compare those, foot bones to other foot feet of ornithomimeds that have been found all over the world. Ornithomimeds were really successful animals that lived all over Asia and even down into Africa and Europe and then we find them here in North America as well.

Speaker 1:

The paleontology story with you personally and your family runs even deeper. We're gonna talk a lot about the Morrison formation in this episode coming up in just a few minutes. But the Morrison formation, is a really incredible one where you find a lot of fossils and your husband happens to be a Morrison formation expert. So how did you two meet?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. He is a Morrison formation expert and worked on that for part of it well, for his his master's and his dissertation And we met at a paleontology meeting on our way to a party. So so we got to meet each other there and get to know each other and eventually started dating and getting married. Now we have two kids that we drag out into the field and and have them help us collect fossils and and it's been great.

Speaker 1:

Were you studying or working on the Morrison Formation when you two met or how has your career cycle worked out to be here now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No. When we met, I was actually working on ceratopsian dinosaurs and that was what I had done my thesis work on were torosaurs from Big Bend National Park. And so I hadn't had a whole lot of experience in the Morrison Formation. And there was a summer that he was looking to hire somebody to come and help a fieldwork for the summer.

Speaker 2:

And so I had applied for that position. And that's how I got my start working in the Morrison formation with him. And I've learned so much from him. I mean, he literally wrote a book on the Morrison formation, two books, and and knows a lot about, the Morrison formation. So I've benefited greatly from his knowledge over the years.

Speaker 2:

But it's been funny how we we started in the kind of Grand Junction, Fruta, Colorado area, then we moved to Moab, and now we're we're here in in Dinosaur National Monument. So we've done three points of the Dinosaur Diamond.

Speaker 1:

Imagine when you got the call to come to Dinosaur and obviously he's familiar with the Morris information. It was exciting for both of you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Was very exciting for both of us. He had a lot of fond memories of of, you know, his career and doing work here and it was funny too because we actually ended up finding out that when I was in high school and he was in college, I had come up here for my first time visiting the park. He was here at the exact same time doing research in the park and we stayed in the same campground on the same night and we didn't even know it. Kind of a funny, you know, just goes to show how how close those circles can be sometimes.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible. You had mentioned the torosaur that you did work on in Big Bend, another huge career highlight for you. Yeah. What was that research like and what is a torosaur?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It was it was a really great place to work. I love Big Bend National Park. It's a beautiful beautiful area. And so I was able to work in the Javelina formation which is late cretaceous in age And I worked on torosaurs.

Speaker 2:

So torosaurs are a cousin of Triceratops. So they have the frill and the horns over the eyes and the nose. And so I worked on what was a small bone bed of torosaurs. So it had both adult and juvenile animals at that site. So it was a really great experience.

Speaker 2:

I really loved working down there.

Speaker 1:

Well behind us we have the Green River flowing and Split Mountain. It's a beautiful site for us to have this conversation at. Dinosaur National Monument is massive and it is absolutely beautiful. I had the pleasure of exploring over the last couple of days in the Echo Park area which was phenomenal, but we're really sitting in kind of a geologic cake. So if you don't mind taking us through all the layers of this incredible monument.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Dinosaur National Monument's a little over 210,000 acres and we have 24 geologic formations that occur here in the park. And so that's the same number as what Grand Canyon has, which is pretty exciting. So about half of our formations are from the Paleozoic time period, and the other half are from the Mesozoic. We have just a teeny tiny amount from the Cenozoic, but the majority of them are from the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic.

Speaker 2:

So behind me here, can see the Weber sandstone, and that is from the Permian time period. And it's these massive sand dunes. But what dinosaur is really known for, of course, is the Morrison Formation, which is late Jurassic in age. But we have a lot of really great geological formations here in the park, which also lead to a lot of really great fossils.

Speaker 1:

Specifically focusing on the Morrison Formation, a 155 to a 148,000,000 years old, where are some of the best areas in the park to be able to experience the Morrison Formation?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I would say that the the highlight of the park of course for visiting the Morrison Formation would be the Carnegie Quarry. The historic Carnegie Quarry is what people think of when they come to Dinosaur, the wall of bones and that is a preserved river channel embedded within the Morrison Formation. And so that's what most people think of when they come here is that section of the Morrison Formation.

Speaker 1:

We're gonna dive into the Dinosaur Quarry a little bit more soon, but I do want to talk about these mountains because these mountains that are here are east west facing which is very uncommon Yeah. In The United States. So how did this area come to be?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So there is a regional uplift in this area that this this area right here is a anticline that pushed all these rocks up on end. And then we also have the Uinta Mountains right over to our our west here. And those are an east west trending mountain range as well. And a lot of that uplift happened during the Laramide Mountain Building, so that kind of late Cretaceous time period when there's a lot of tectonic action going on and moving these rocks.

Speaker 2:

And so all the rocks on kind of the south portion of the park, including the ones behind me here at Split Mountain, are all kind of tilted up on end like this, which leads to these really, really impressive vistas of all these tilted rocks.

Speaker 1:

What was the what is it believed to be the ancient riverbed that cut through here and, you know, revealed a lot of these fossils?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the river definitely cuts down through Split Mountain here and it's had several different routes that it's taken over the year. One of the one of the routes truncated that way probably during the during the Cenozoic. But this river has been cutting down through these units for for thousands and thousands and millions of years to create Split Mountain that we have behind us here. And this is the Green River and it would have been the ancestral Green River coming down out of Wyoming.

Speaker 1:

And the Green River has carved some of the most iconic landscapes in all The United States including Canyonlands. Yeah. And this monument driving through it really gives you the feel of kind of a mix of the Grand Canyon and Canyonlands. It's remarkable. Is this kind of a hotspot for geologists to come and and study the different formations?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You know we do get a lot of people that come to study the different formations here especially because we have a lot of those tectonic forces that have moved and shaped things as well. And a lot of that history goes all the way back to to Powell who first came through this area on the Green River. He came through here I think two or three times at least. And he was one of the first people to discover fossils here in the park as a as a geologist and writing up what he saw.

Speaker 2:

So it actually has this really long great geologic history.

Speaker 1:

And another amazing river that cuts through Dinosaur National Monument is the Yampa River which the confluence of the Yampa and the Green are in an area called Echo Park. How special is that area?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's super special. The Yampa is a really cool river. It's one of the last undammed natural rivers that runs out west and its headwaters are up in the Steamboat Springs area and then it flows out into the park here and of course the confluence is there at Echo Park. And it's a really beautiful river ecosystem that preserves a lot of really unique flora and fauna and animals and and it's just a really special river corridor.

Speaker 1:

Are there any other layers here that preserve fossils as well as the Morrison Formation?

Speaker 2:

Most of our units throughout the Paleozoic and Mesozoic preserve fossils here within the park. So we have some of the oldest fossils being trilobites and little shells called hyaliths in the Cambrian period all the way up until fossils that we get here in the the late Cretaceous.

Speaker 1:

Why is the Morrison Formation in particular so good at preserving the fossils that we see here?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. The Morrison Formation is really good at preserving fossils here because it was a depositional environment. There was a lot of deposition happening which means a lot of sediment coming in to be able to preserve those animals and turn them into fossils.

Speaker 1:

Take me back a 155 to a 148,000,000 years ago. What did this climate, what did the environment look like in this area and then what may have been walking in front of us?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. The morsel formation, in this area during the late Jurassic would have been really lush. We know that there were large trees here. We get really large trees, some the size of redwoods. There were no flowering plants yet, so there would have been things like cycads and horsetails and lots of ferns and tree ferns and conifers.

Speaker 2:

And so a lot of a lot of vegetation, and a lot of that vegetation is really good for a lot of these dinosaurs. So the most common dinosaurs that we get here in the Morrison Formation would be the long necked sauropod dinosaurs. We have, of course, Camarasaurus, which is the most common dinosaur that you get in the Morrison Formation as a whole, and we have quite a few Camarasaur fossils found here. And then we have their cousins, the diplodocids. So we have Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Ambarasaurus.

Speaker 2:

And we get a lot of those. And of course Apatosaurus was the very first sauropod dinosaur, first dinosaur found here at Dinosaur National Monument by Earl Douglas. We also have the other herbivores, Camptosaurus and Drysaurus, which are two smaller kind of generalist herbivore dinosaurs that walked on two legs. And then we of course have Stegosaurus. Everybody loves Stegosaurus.

Speaker 2:

Stegosaurus is the Colorado state fossil, and he is the one that has those great plates on its back and a spiny tail called a a thegomizer. So Stegosaurus is is a really well known fossil that we have here from the park, and we actually have one of the only juvenile or baby stegosaurus that's ever been found here as well. And then we have the meat eating dinosaurs. The meat eating dinosaurs are dominated mostly by Allosaurus, which was kind of a generalist predator at the time. So we do get Allosaurus and then we have a few bones of Ceratosaurus and another larger theropod called, Torvosaurus.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. Why do you think people are so in love with, Stegosaurus? Why is it such a beloved creature?

Speaker 2:

It's such a cool dinosaur. I mean like he's just mean to start off with it's it's cute. I mean they get to be the size of your van nearly. I mean they do get really large. But you know, mean how weird is it to see an animal that, you know, is is as big as a van but has these weird, you know, kite and diamond shaped thingamajigs on its back.

Speaker 2:

You know? And and that, of course, has been hotly contested over the decades of what were those plates for. And then, of course, it truncates on this teeny tiny little head. This adorable just little head that's just munching around and eating. It probably wasn't like super duper smart for dinosaurs, but just, you know, kind of adorable.

Speaker 2:

And then they've got that spiky tail at the other end for protecting themselves. And and I think that that's so cool that when you think about this kind of big, doofy, cool animal and then it's got like this, you know, hard rock metal tail that's like ready to rock and roll and says, leave me alone. So, yeah. It's just kind of a cool animal.

Speaker 1:

What are some of the debates around the the shields on its back?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. People have debated over the years. I mean, for a while, they debated about the position of the plates, whether they were like in a line or whether they were in a a solid line. At one point, they thought that I mean, the the name Stegosaurus means shield reptile and and they thought that those were almost flat like roof tiles, on its back. There's been debate about whether or not they because, I mean, they finally kind of figured out the way the plates were supposed to be placed thanks to some really nice specimens.

Speaker 2:

And then people debate debated whether or not those plates were for, you know, gathering solar energy to to warm up these poor reptiles or, you know, if they were for, species recognition or if they could flush them with color when it was mating season and things like that. So lots of lots of cool conversations about those cool plates.

Speaker 1:

What has the geology told us about how these animals like the Stegosaurus and Allosaurus, how have they passed away? Was there a mass extinction event? Was it a long form drought? What what does the geology say?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the geology for what we see at the Carnegie Quarry is a braided stream channel that tells us that there was a lot of water in the area and it it was a, you know, a very nice braided stream with with water flowing down. And within this water column, we know that there were turtles and crocodiles, there would have been fish, but we also find a lot of clams. And these clams are kind of cool because in order for these clams to spawn and be successful, their their larvae actually have to attach to the gills of fish to move around. So we know that there would have been, fish in these streams.

Speaker 2:

But what we find mostly in that geologic layer that preserves all of these dinosaurs here at the monument are all these clams that are popped open. So it's basically a Jurassic clam bake, I like to call it, where all these poor clams are popped open. And when you see all these clams that are popped open, that tells you that they were most likely undergoing a drought and that these animals, these these clams were were suffering from exposure to either no water or very warm water and low water levels. And so it was killing off those clams as well. And so that kind of helps us to understand why all these dinosaurs are preserved here as well.

Speaker 2:

Those dinosaurs were probably drought stressed and dying due to the drought in and near this river channel, and their bodies were being covered up later by that surrounding sediment like what we have here in front of us with the river being high right now and it's moving all of this sediment down the river channel. That kind of sediment would also have covered up those bodies of those animals.

Speaker 1:

Has that always amazed you as a paleontologist to see little details and maybe the the animals or species that you don't expect to, you know, inform you in these ways?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Absolutely. And another cool indicator that we get at the quarry too is that a lot of those bones aren't scavenged on. It's not like it was like other dinosaur quarries of the same age where it was just kind of like a all you could eat buffet for these, you know, scavenging dinosaurs and other scavenging animals. The these animals seem to have been covered up rapidly enough that they weren't scavenged upon.

Speaker 2:

And what we do find are bug borings on the bones a lot, and that tells us that bugs kind of probably something like maggots are basically eating down through those carcasses and able to, you know, eat up that that meat and muscle. And sometimes they get down too far and they chew on the bone. And so several of the bones show, these bug borings on them. And that tells us that that was like one of the major decomposers in that environment.

Speaker 1:

Wow. And in that quarry, did those animals peel over and die in that spa or were they washed downstream, by that ancient river?

Speaker 2:

They were probably washed downstream by the ancient river. There definitely are there was areas of the quarry where you get a higher degree of articulation of those animals, which tells us that maybe they didn't travel as far. They kind of, maybe were were where they lie and got covered up and preserved there. And then there are areas of the quarry where it looks like the water was more swift moving and it was moving those bodies around and disarticulating them or pulling them apart. So for instance, with the sauropods, with these long necked dinosaurs, we get a lot of isolated tails.

Speaker 2:

We get a lot of isolated necks because those of course would have had a lot of sinew on them holding them together. So we get a lots of bits and pieces of that, but a lot of what you see in the quarry are these disarticulated bones or these kind of bone logjams where a lot of bones are rafted up against each other and those were probably moved by water.

Speaker 1:

So when they're fragmented and not together, it's more likely if they traveled upstream whether rather when they're together there's a chance they might have Yeah. Died in that similar area.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Yeah. So they're moving about definitely on the environment.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting. Do you get raptor fossils in this area as well?

Speaker 2:

Not in the Morrison Formation, but just a little higher in the Cedar Mountain Formation. We have actually had a dromaeosaur of some sort discovered. And so there's still research going on on that, so it hasn't been fully described. But that would have been in kind of the next period of geologic time there in the early Cretaceous. And it lived alongside another new dinosaur from the park called a Betasaurus, which is a long necked dinosaur.

Speaker 2:

And we actually have four individuals from one quarry that have been found really near the Carnegie Quarry. And it looks like those animals were all entombed, at one time as well. And that's a really interesting new dinosaur that's been found only here in Dinosaur National Monument and is the best and most well preserved sauropods that have been found from the early Cretaceous in North America.

Speaker 1:

Several times now you had mentioned the abundance of long neck dinosaurs in this area. You also had mentioned the tall conifer trees that were here. Is that the ecology between those animals and the environment that was here at the time?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. These animals, I mean they would have been constantly eating stuff. Mean they they also have very small heads but giant bodies. I mean, some of these, like Diplodocus is as long as two school buses. That's a lot of animal to keep going, a lot of caloric intake that you have to do.

Speaker 2:

And so, yeah, they were kind of eating machines. And so we know that they're they're happy here because we've got these great vegetated environments for these critters to live on. And so animals like Camarasaurs are feeding up higher on these trees. They had kind of a more raised neck. And so they're probably feeding up a little higher than dinosaurs like Diplodocus who was maybe more vacuuming the the bottom of the floor.

Speaker 2:

He could reach up and grab trees too, but he's probably more, you know, feeding down low. I think you get the more generalist herbivores like Stegosaurus and Drysaurus, and, you know, they can't reach up into the trees. They can only reach what their poor little necks will will get them to. So there's a lot of different trophic feeding levels that these critters are are eating on, and then there's the animals that eat them.

Speaker 1:

Adam from Petrified Forest, one of the things he said that's always stuck with me is, when we think about deep time like the late Jurassic, you know, these species are in evolution is just trying everything out just to survive. Does that always amaze you too to see evolutionary traits of some of these creatures?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Because especially with the diplodosids, their mouth is basically a rake. They've got these really goofy teeth that are about the size of a pencil, so a mouth full of pencils And they're not, you know, chewing up their food. They're just, you know, stripping leaves off of off of these, trees to eat. And so it's like, that's kind of a silly way to to survive if you're gonna need to eat that much food and you've just got a rake for a mouth basically.

Speaker 2:

But then their cousin Camarasaurus has these these also equally goofy looking teeth. They're like the size of your thumb. And but again they're still not masticating their food really. They're not really chewing up their food. So it's impressive that an animal that big that needed to eat that much kind of came to this, you know, this this evolutionary, you know, solution of just being rakes and just pulling this vegetation off to eat.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's that's really interesting how they how they survived for so long and were as successful as they were because they were very, very successful sauropods in general to be able to just live life like that.

Speaker 1:

The crocodilians that were here that you had mentioned, are their relatives or ancestors still alive today or are the ones that were here very different?

Speaker 2:

Both. And so we there are crocodiles that are are somewhat similar to the modern day crocodiles. Of course, they've changed over time but somewhat similar. Know, like if you saw it if you were back here a 150,000,000 years ago and this was the river flowing through the park and you saw a crocodile laying there, you would recognize it as a crocodile. You would know that that was a crocodile.

Speaker 2:

But they're also these really kind of fun, smaller terrestrial crocodiles that I always think they look kind of like a a cat put in a spandex outfit and and like with a really short goofy skull on their heads. And so there are these little terrestrial crocodiles as well. They were about the size of a house cat, really scrawny, kinda had a little bit longer legs that could you know run around and maybe eat dinosaur eggs or baby dinosaurs or or you know small mammals and things like that.

Speaker 1:

The Allosaurus, a very popular dinosaur to think about. Maybe some folks would think it looks similar to a t rex, I think much smaller and also a very different time period.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

How did they maneuver around this landscape and you had mentioned they're apex predators, so how did they predate on these animals that you had mentioned?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So Allosaurus is probably kind of the generalist predator at the time that eats whatever it wants to eat for the most part, but was probably pretty smart about what it picked. I mean like an adult size Allosaurus is not gonna try to take down an adult size Apatosaurus. You know, that's probably not your best choice of a meal. They're just these big animals living on the environment.

Speaker 2:

They probably scavenged food as well. It's a Utah State dinosaur, so that's kind of a fun tie in to it. It's our Utah State dinosaur. And we actually one of the cool things about Allosaurus too here in the park is that we actually have one of the oldest Allosaurus that's ever been found, Allosaurus gemmadsini, which is from the Morrison Formation but a layer a little older called the salt wash member. And then we also have Allosaurus fragilis, which is kind of the common, Allosaurus that people think of when they think of Allosaurus that lived in that kind of Carnegie, quarry environment.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of interesting to have these two different species of Allosaurus here preserved in the park because that kind of shows us basically what is, for lack of a better term, the kind of the great granddaddy of Allosaurus and how it evolves or changes into this more robust form of Allosaurus fragilis, which was, you know, kind of the apex predator during that one hundred and fifty million year time around the Carnegie Quarry. And so we don't have a lot of bones in the Carnegie Quarry that show that those animals were feeding on those, on those animals that would have been dead or dying in this area. So, yep, I was kinda curious. We do get a lot of shed teeth, and that's a fun thing too with Allosaurus and with all dinosaurs is anytime they lose a tooth another one always grows back in its place. So sometimes honestly we probably have more Allosaurus shed teeth that have been collected within the park than actual Allosaurus specimens.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever find instances where you have bone that match, that have markings that match Allosaurus teeth where it's a, you know, a direct correlation of a predation strike?

Speaker 2:

Possibly. We have one specimen in the quarry which is a juvenile diplodos or juvenile animal. The femur is only about this big and you can actually see some tooth marks on one end of that bone which correlate well with the tooth spacing in the mouth of an allosaurus.

Speaker 1:

Diving deeper into the quarry, the story and how it got spearheaded and how it came to be is really kind of a beautiful one. So you don't mind taking us how the the quarry came to be and and why visitors are able to see it today? Sure.

Speaker 2:

So, in nineteen o eight, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh had been collecting fossils, in the Rocky Mountain West area, a lot of, in Wyoming and the kind of the the front range area of of the Colorado. And those areas were starting to get kind of crowded and overworked and there were a lot of paleontologists working in those areas at the time. And the Carnegie Museum was still really new and they were wanting to get these large dinosaurs to put on display. And they had already had a lot of luck in Wyoming collecting this big beautiful Diplodocus that they actually ended up naming after Andrew Carnegie Diplodocus carnegiei. And so they wanted more like that.

Speaker 2:

They wanted more big cool dinosaurs to put in their brand new museum that they were building. And so they dispatched one of their paleontologists named Earl Douglas, who was actually a mammal paleontologist, out into this Uinta Basin area here in Northeastern Utah to look for fossils. They had been tipped off by a fellow paleontologist to come to this area, and Earl was already familiar with this area due to his mammal fossil collecting. So Earl comes out here in nineteen o eight to look for fossils and he does find some. He finds some some dinosaur fossils, probably it sounds like sauropods, and he decides that he's gonna come back here and collect those fossils.

Speaker 2:

So they decide to come back in nineteen o nine. So they go back east and they come back in nineteen o nine. And when they get here in July, they discover that the bones that they had purposefully come to collect had already been collected by somebody else, and we don't know who collected those. So those fossils were missing. So now he had to start all over again.

Speaker 2:

So he began searching and spends about a month, you know, traversing this. He went to Basin area looking for the right kinds of fossils for his museum, for this museum that he's working on. And he's just kind of striking out. Everywhere he goes, he's striking out. He's not having any luck.

Speaker 2:

He's having really grumpy bad days. Right? Like, just nothing's going right. And he kept all these great journals so you can read all of his entries. And sure enough in August, somebody had said, well, go out north of Jensen, Utah, which was still a small town even back then.

Speaker 2:

It was mostly there because there was a ford across the the Green River that people would use. And so he he borrowed some horses and came up here on horseback and was riding around looking for for fossils. And the story goes is that he saw a fossil up on the hillside and like almost fell off his horse with excitement and went up to it and was like, this is it. This is the place. This this is where I want to dig.

Speaker 2:

And what he saw were these beautiful articulated series of vertebrae. And we still have a photo of that today of, this section of the of a sauropod's body that ends up being the holotype of a dinosaur called Apatosaurus luisi, which they named after Andrew Carnegie's wife, which was pretty smart on their part. And it's just this beautiful fossil that's still on display to this day at the Carnegie Museum. You can go and see it. You can see the same fossils that he discovered in nineteen o nine in this animal on display.

Speaker 2:

It's amazing and beautiful, and you really don't even realize how big sauropods are until you're right up against that specimen. It's huge. It's kind of an animal where you can walk underneath it and just barely tickle its belly as you're walking underneath it. Super cool animal. And so that was really what started kind of this bone rush here at Dinosaur National Monument.

Speaker 2:

So Earl writes his letters back and forth to his director at the Carnegie. And he's like, this is it. I found it. Here we go. And so that began, many many years of work here.

Speaker 2:

So they started working in nineteen o nine and worked continuously here at what becomes the Carnegie Quarry till 1922. And during that time, they removed hundreds of thousands of tons of fossils and rock, and they would ship those back to Pittsburgh, which also was no small feat because they would have horses pulling those out, they would have to load them up on on a on a horse drawn cart and then ford the Green River and then on, you know, a horse cart, take them down to the town of Dragon, which is also an itty bitty little mining town, down the Book Cliffs to the city of Mack, town of Mack, small little town, on the Western Slope of of Colorado. And then they would get loaded up onto the big train to go back to Pittsburgh where they would get worked on. And they were so excited about these fossils, especially with the Apatosaurus, that they had that thing. They started digging it out in nineteen o nine, and they had it fully mounted just a few years later in the museum for people to be able to see.

Speaker 2:

So it was a really remarkable specimen for people to be able to see. And that kind of starts the whole thing of them finding all these beautiful specimens. Another really famous specimen that they found here is a juvenile Camarasaurus, which was almost complete and to this day is probably still one of the most complete, if not the most complete sauropods that's ever been found anywhere in the whole world. And it was found right here at Dinosaur National Monument, and it was only missing a few bones. And that dinosaur really helped people to be able to understand when they started studying it that these animals' arms were held kind of underneath them.

Speaker 2:

They weren't, like, sprawling and dragging their bodies through the mud. So a really nice articulated animal like that helped to really help us have more of a modern understanding of how these animals were moving about.

Speaker 1:

Earl Douglas, one of his wishes was for that quarry to exist.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

At a certain point decided that digging was enough and they had dug out everything they needed to and they wanted to preserve an area where people can go and see these fossils in its original form. What does that mean to you as a paleontologist? His forethought thought to have that insight for people to be able to experience a quarry like this?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's absolutely spectacular and Earl realized that pretty early on because when he first started digging there, people in town heard about it And they would come out for Sunday picnics. They would come out like all their nice finery. Women would climb up there in their big old wool skirts. And people immediately started visiting this area.

Speaker 2:

And so he really saw the value early on of people being able to enjoy the area and the excitement that they would have for seeing these dinosaur fossils still in the rock where they had been for a 150,000,000 years. So he really saw the value of preserving those. And he really enjoyed working here. He had moved his wife and son here, and they lived here in the park with him. And several times throughout the years, the Carnegie Museum kind of was like, oh, we have enough.

Speaker 2:

We have enough fossils. You should come back home. And he's like, no, no. This is going great. I'll keep going.

Speaker 2:

But eventually, he did realize that they had collected quite a bit and that this was an area worth preserving. And in 1915 is when the Monument was established. And even after the Monument was established, they did continue to work here for a number of years after that. But he definitely saw, kinda had that forethought of preserving this site for people to be able to come and enjoy it. And there's really not that many places, especially in The United States, where you can go and see dinosaur fossils in the rock exactly where they where they died or were fossilized without, being tampered with.

Speaker 2:

I mean, they're just there in the rock. And there's not too many places in The United States where you can go and see that and have that experience of walking right up to the rock and putting your hands on a fossil that's been laying there for a 150,000,000 years. And so I think it's a really really special experience for people to be able to have.

Speaker 1:

Do people have, you know, an emotional experience going into the quarry and seeing that?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. That's one of my favorite things when I'm getting to work at the quarry and and hanging up kind of there by the front doors. I love hearing people walk through the door and just the audible gasp that people have, the just oxygen going out to the room. It's so cool to to hear people who have never been there, just their response to having seen it. And I've seen grown people cry at the sight of of being able to touch a fossil.

Speaker 2:

I've had people tell me, I never thought these things were real. And I can walk up and and touch a dinosaur bone and this has just blown my mind. And so it's really cool to watch people be able to have that experience.

Speaker 1:

I bet. I've heard you describe it as kind of like the Disneyland for fossils and It is. Paleontology.

Speaker 2:

It absolutely is the Disneyland and and the kind of the Disneyland effect is the fact that we have 10 different dinosaurs preserved in one quarry which is super rare, not normal. And of those 10 dinosaurs, so many of them are really well preserved, really well represented. And that we have skulls for a lot of these animals. Skulls are are very, very rare really in the fossil record. Their bones are very thin.

Speaker 2:

They don't get preserved as often or or they don't get found as often. And so skulls are really important, and we actually have had so many different dinosaur skulls found here, which just kind of blows my mind. I mean, we have five Camarasaur skulls that have been found, not to mention one of the nicest Allsaur skulls that's ever been found anywhere in the whole world. So I kind of think of that as the Disneyland effect of like, this is not normal. And so you have to tell like young researchers especially when they come and study it that this is this is not normal.

Speaker 2:

This is not the way it is in most quarries. Most quarries you'll find you know a few bones here and there. Most of them are not going to have skulls preserved. And that's that's normal to find like five or six bones of an animal. That feels more normal than to find these entire articulated animals.

Speaker 1:

To find this amount of fossils in one quarry and different species, is that also a good indicator for how densely populated this area might have been with dinosaurs?

Speaker 2:

You know, was a it was a healthy environment I think. It's not like, what you would see like in the movies where it's like the Great Valley and all these animals are living aside each other and eating right next to each other all at once. That they're all there at the exact same, know, they're all there at 07:00 for dinner. You know, they were living in this environment and coming in and out. I mean, just like this is a healthy environment and we'll have deer that come down and and go out.

Speaker 2:

We'll have elk, we'll have geese, we have all sorts of different animals. Thank you, on cue. We'll have all sorts of animals that are living in this environment in a healthy happy way. But we don't necessarily see them all at once all the time. So I think that's important to remember too when you're thinking about what a healthy ecosystem looks like and and all the animals living upon it and and it and interacting with it.

Speaker 1:

The quarry wall, has that been altered at all by the park service? Has it been dug more? And then how did the the structure around that wall come to be?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So when Earl Douglas was working here, he had worked along the top of the ridgeline and definitely dug down into it. But when they left in, when they stopped work in that area in 1924, they left it as is. And the Park Service, you know, wanted to develop it, but they were kind of on the fence for a while and what as to what to do. In the thirties, they started bringing people out to discuss a way of developing it.

Speaker 2:

And so in the thirties is really when they started moving forward with with plans for the park because before that there were no there was no real infrastructure here. And so in the thirties they brought out basically during the the New Deal, they had a lot of different CCC type camps come through between 1933 and 1940 of of these individuals, these men who had come out and they basically they weren't quarrying the dinosaurs. What they were doing was dropping down the rock layer covering up the dinosaur quarry so that it could be accessible. And so there were several iterations of buildings that were drawn over the quarry to be able to open it as kind of like a in situ museum. And the ultimate decision was to open the building as it almost currently is today, this big glass encased box around the quarry building.

Speaker 2:

And the original building, it's a Mission 66 building, which is really cool for for all of the architecture nerds. It had this big rotunda on the front, this big round almost turret that people would walk up this ramp to come into to be able to to see the quarry. And that building persisted. It opened in 1958 and lasted until the early two thousands. The problem was that a lot of that building was built on the Morrison Formation mudstones, which is a bentonitic shrinking and swelling clay.

Speaker 2:

So that ground was constantly doing this and this and moving up and down, and that's not great for a rigid concrete structure. And so the building started to have some structural issues. So in the early two thousands, they actually had to close the building to do some renovations. And so they removed that rotunda at that time and reopened the building in the early two thousands to be what it looks like today. So it's a really great historic building.

Speaker 2:

It's really it's cool to see it because I hear people say, it looks so modern. That's such a cool design. And most people don't realize that that building opened in 1958 and that it pretty much still looks the same. I mean, it's it's literally a giant glass box on top of the Sky Historic Corridor. It's just such a beautiful building.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's really gorgeous. I've enjoyed looking from the outside at it and of course being on the inside but a great project that you're currently deeply involved in right now is happening just outside those entrance doors. Yeah. You recently discovered dinosaur bones in the parking lot where visitors can park at and then go into the quarry.

Speaker 1:

What is that project? How'd you discover those bones and what dinosaur is it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So last year we had federal highways project that repaved most of the roads in the park and part of the decision was made to peel off the layer of asphalt off of the parking lot because the parking lot of the Quarry Exhibit Hall is basically the tailings pile from the dinosaur quarry. So as, you know, Earl Douglas and the CCC guys, as people had worked there over the decades, when they would remove the rock that didn't have fossils in it, they just pushed it off the side of the hill. And they just kept pushing it off that east side of the hill, and that actually ended up being kind of the apron that the parking lot was built upon. And it had never been compacted or tamped down or anything like that.

Speaker 2:

It was just the tailings pile of all these mine tailings that come off of the quarry. And so the decision was made in order to make that parking lot more stable to strip off all the asphalt and to excavate down several feet in order to put in backfill to make it just more stable and more durable. And so we started doing that last year and due to just the sheer number of fossils that have been found in that very small area, we knew that we needed to be on-site to keep an eye out for fossils. So myself and my, paleontology assistant, Rudy Hummel, walked around behind the backhoes and kept an eye out. Every single scoop that they took out of that parking lot, we checked for fossils and kept an eye out for things.

Speaker 2:

And we found several fossils that were, ones that had been disposed of during their original excavation, so we found several pieces of those. But as we got closer to that river channel that's preserved, it's a hard bank of sandstone, we got really slow. Because I was concerned that we would find fossils. I was pretty sure. And I'm not sure the construction crew thought that we would.

Speaker 2:

And I was like, no, we're going to find fossils. And so as we got closer to that sandstone, we we slowed way down. And as we very slowly cleaned the top of that layer off, we came across a a bone. And it had been cut off probably in the nineteen fifties when they put in the original parking lot. And so I saw this cross section of bone and was like, alright, it was my own Earl Douglas.

Speaker 2:

Was like, here it is. And so we kind of stopped work in that area and began excavating down to remove this bone so that it wouldn't get further damaged by the parking lot construction. And as we continued to dig around this bone, which ended up being a tibia and fibula, we started finding vertebrae running alongside of it. And those vertebrae belonged to a Diplodocus, so one of these long necked, long tailed sauropod dinosaurs. And so as, Rudy and I began to excavate down around this tail, they were tail vertebrae, he went one way, I went the other, and it just kept going and going and going as these things do because they're they're very long.

Speaker 2:

And we ended up discovering 14 tail vertebra, a lower leg, a lower arm, another limb bone from another dinosaur, a turtle, lots and lots of clams, and it was really exciting. And so we we excavated that, during September and October 2025, and then the time came for them to pave. They needed to get the the cap on, but we hadn't gotten all the way over. We were still finding fossils. So the decision was made to go ahead and cap what we had excavated and remove it, and we took it back to our museum collections, and it's currently being prepared at the museum.

Speaker 2:

And then we left a very small portion to be able to excavate this year. And that's what we're working on right now is that little less last little portion that we didn't get to finish. And so within that quarry, we opened it about two weeks ago. And since then, we have found the an a leg bone and an arm bone of a smaller sauropod dinosaur, like a juvenile dinosaur. We've found more of the tail of the Diplodocus that we found originally, we've nicknamed Cody after the after the foremen of the construction group.

Speaker 2:

And then, we've also found another limb bone, near that. And then just a little further down, we found another arm bone. So right now in that one one section of the quarry, have three different individual sauropods that we have found, and it's still continuing. So we're spending this last week really trying to get those fossils completely excavated so that they can continue getting the parking lot paved.

Speaker 1:

Was that one of the more interesting sites that you've had to quarry and work in?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's definitely interesting. I had never excavated in a parking lot before. So that was a new experience. A lot of times you're you're hoofing it into your sides.

Speaker 2:

You're you're walking in and you're carrying all your gear and everything you need. Sometimes you know some people work you know tens of miles, if not further back into the backcountry where there's the only access is by walking or or helicopter or a horse or something. And so, yeah, we feel a little spoiled to be able to sit in a parking lot and have electricity and running water and bathrooms and access to our vehicle and all of our tools and anything we could possibly need. But it's also been a really great experience because it's right there in the parking lot and visitors can absolutely come right up to it, look in the hole, ask us questions, talk to us about what we're doing, and watch an actual paleontology excavation happening in real time. How many places can you go and do that?

Speaker 2:

Especially where you could you can roll up in a wheelchair or a stroller right up to the edge and look down in the hole and be able to ask questions and talk to us. So it's a pretty cool experience.

Speaker 1:

It's the dual mandate in live action.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, the lead paleontologist here at Dinosaur National Monument. So I might assume that as a paleontologist here in Dinosaur you're only excavating and looking for dinosaur bones. Is that true or are you looking for other species from other areas as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. No. We definitely look throughout the geologic time scale that we have preserved here in the park and we have, you know, this wonderful wealth of riches when it comes to rocks. So we're really really lucky. So yeah, we've gone out and collected those early old fossils, those little Cambrian trilobites and and shells.

Speaker 2:

We've collected a lot of those. We've collected a lot of invertebrate fossils along the river corridor in the last few years. And then we've also paleontologists before me have, you know, documented dinosaur track sites and other animal track sites that we have in the park. There we have over 400 paleontology, localities throughout the park. So there's there's a lot a lot of opportunity to find fossils in this park.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, we don't just focus on the Kernigie Court anymore, we look as a whole throughout the entire landscape.

Speaker 1:

One thing I want to bring up is like many National Park units, the name I don't wanna say it can be misleading but doesn't tell the whole story. Yeah. Obviously, we've talked a lot about dinosaurs. I mentioned earlier I did some exploring and how gorgeous this area is. It reminds me so much of Capital P Parks.

Speaker 1:

Do you encourage folks when they come here to explore beyond just the quarry?

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely. Because it's such a beautiful varied park and there's so much to see here whether it's the really amazing rock art that we have or just, you know, coming down and enjoying the river, especially being able to go see that Confluence area, going for hikes. I mean, a lot of our trails in the park, you can go for a hike and not see a single soul, which is pretty special. I mean, you can't say that about other parks especially in Utah. I mean you will run into people.

Speaker 2:

So it's really a special remote park to be able to come and enjoy kind of this peaceful nature experience and to be able to see such an amazing variety of things.

Speaker 1:

To your point, the first trail when you pass the visitor center is the Sound Of Silence Trail. So you definitely can't find silence and peace here.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And the road that leads down to the confluence of the Green And Yampa River, the Echo Park Road is a pretty adventurous road for people who like to who want adventures in their vehicles.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. We also have I mean there's the Rainbow Park access kind of on the western end of the park that takes you into an area that doesn't get a lot of travel. On our eastern extent, we have Deer Lodge where a lot of people put in to go down the Yampa River. We have the Yampa Bench Road which traverses along the the bench above the Yampa River. Also kind of a remote four wheel drive road.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of this park is roadless. So if you really wanna experience this park, you have to go out there by foot, or on horseback or, you know, you have to actually, go out and into the wilderness to experience it, which is really cool because we also have these amazing dark skies here. So you can go out to the park and see the Milky Way. You can see, you know, so many stars and that's a really cool experience that not everybody has the opportunity to see. So it's really cool to experience so many different aspects of of this area.

Speaker 1:

Harper's Corner is another remarkable area. You can see Whirlpool Canyon and kind of the east and west sides of the Green River as well as the confluence from a high level and it's really breathtaking and it that area in particular reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon at rocks that are up to a billion years old.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And some of those rocks are similar rocks that you get in the Grand Canyon and actually when you get to the end of the Harper's Corner Trail, everybody's looking at the vista and at the rivers and of Mitten Park Fault and everything. But if you look right down at the ground, the whole limestone slab that you're standing on is covered in fossils too.

Speaker 1:

Wow. I was gonna ask you about that. I mean, how recognizable are fossils in this area? If you're keeping a close eye on the formations around you, are you destined to see one?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. If you're keeping an eye out and you kind of have have an idea of what you're looking for, you can probably find fossils. We have everything from snails to all these marine animals, corals and crinoids and brachiopods and things like that. So you have a lot of opportunity of seeing fossils here in the park beyond even just dinosaurs.

Speaker 1:

As I've mentioned several times, you've had a remarkable career in paleontology. If you told your 13 year old self that you'd be the lead paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument, would you believe

Speaker 2:

No. No. I would have a hard time believing it. My mom brought me here, the year between my junior and senior year of high school and I have a photo of myself up at the quarry, and I have it hanging in my office because, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was really freshly into paleontology and enthusiastic about it back then.

Speaker 2:

And I think if I went back and could whisper into my my ear and let myself know that that I would be here. I'm not sure I would believe them because it's it's such a remarkable place to be at and I with such a rich history and I feel so very lucky.

Speaker 1:

One thing I omitted in the beginning of the podcast to bring up but wanna talk about now is, 're you an inspiration for a lot of reasons but you're open to talking about your dyslexia and how you've had to overcome that throughout your life to be able to achieve what you have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. I have dyslexia and a severe math learning disability which didn't always make school easy. Sometimes, you know, led to real challenges. I've had I had a math teacher in high school tell me that not everybody was meant to go to college.

Speaker 2:

And I'm so glad I didn't listen to him because I've had such a great time, you know, being able to explore our world. And you can't let these little things hold you up. If there's something you're really passionate about and that you really wanna do, keep working on it. There's people who will help you along the way. There are people like mister Rogers said, look for the helpers.

Speaker 2:

There's people who And will help if you have a zeal and, a tenacity and a real passion for something, go for it. Keep working on it because there are ways to to still do what you wanna do. And it may not be the traditional route. It may not be the clear path that you might think that you see for yourself or that other people have taken before you. But if you really want it and wanna try hard enough, you can you can get there.

Speaker 2:

And so I feel so lucky because I've had so many people over the years who have helped me, in so many various ways who still help me, who I can pick up the phone and call and say, hey. I need help with this. Or can you can you tell me more about this? Or can you can you, you know, answer a question for me? Who are just so gracious and so willing to help.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's one of the things that I love about this community of paleontology and of geology and of park service employees is that we're never more than a call or a text or an email away that we can always reach out for each other. We're basically a a small big family.

Speaker 1:

I love that. We mentioned the state dinosaur in Arkansas that played a part in. We also mentioned the tortoise who are in Bend National Park, Big Bend National Park. Is there a particular discovery or role that you've played in any you know, fossil or story that stands out to you?

Speaker 2:

Oh goodness. I don't know. I've had such a variety of experiences which I think is is really fun and interesting. I guess one of one of the funner discoveries that I got to do was one of our one of our good friends Brian Ng and Tutran discovered a Brachiosaur. And there are not very many Brachiosaurs out there in the world.

Speaker 2:

And they found this beautiful Brachiosaur humerus. And so we took our friends and our family and we went out there and we got to excavate part of this Brachiosaurus, large humerus and then some other bones. If we had been there, you know, five hundred years earlier, we probably would have been able to collect more of it. But it was such a cool experience because I got to be out there with some of my best friends, some of my dear friends to collect this specimen. Our my my family got to come and help.

Speaker 2:

My daughter is a horse girl and really loves horses. And this fossil was in a in kind of a a low steep valley that we we didn't have the money to have a helicopter to get it out. And Brachiosaurs are not small. I mean, this bone is like six foot long. So we were trying to figure out how we were gonna get it out.

Speaker 2:

We knew that none of us could carry it out. And she's like, don't we use horses? And so through through a network, we we found, some local individuals that had clydesdales. And they came out and used those clydesdales to pull the fossils out. And now they're part of our network.

Speaker 2:

I mean, now we're we're, you know, close with this family, and my daughter goes to school with their kids, and their kids got to come out and help us excavate the fossil too. So it was just this really awesome, amazing experience and and definitely one that that stays in the mind because it was just so much fun and and such a unique thing. Mean how many people can say they've dug up a Brachiosaurus?

Speaker 1:

Lead paleontologist Adam at Petrified Forest and lead paleontologist Nick at John Day Fossil Beds have both made the case that they are the meccas for in the park service. So I I believe it's time for you to make the case that Dinosaur is is actually the mecca.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we're the real Jurassic Park. I mean, if people wanna come to Jurassic Park, this is the Jurassic Park.

Speaker 1:

So,

Speaker 2:

yeah. If you want to enjoy mammal fossils, absolutely go to John Day. It's a really great mammal fossil park. If you want to enjoy petrified wood and really really cool old animals, then yeah, Petrified forest is an absolutely great place to visit. But if you want dinosaurs and you wanna like see dinosaur fossils and that's what a lot of people think of when they think of fossils or dinosaurs, then Dinosaur National Monument is the place for you.

Speaker 1:

Has it been a dream for you here?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's an amazing place to work and I feel so lucky to be here and I have the the best coworkers and colleagues and and volunteers and network here. Feel so very very lucky.

Speaker 1:

Well, like I had mentioned throughout this this episode, this is a remarkable place and I've had a blast getting to chat with you and spend time in this amazing park. We wanna give you the floor if there's any final thoughts or things that you wanna say to to folks to come out and visit this amazing national monument.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I know we we would love for people to come visit Dinosaur and and come out and experience this place. It's such a magical place. It's so cool. And and we really encourage people to go out and enjoy their public lands and their national parks and and encourage people to just enjoy and love those spaces.

Speaker 2:

And if you find fossils, they're really cool. They're I mean, like, we'll have people that'll be like, oh, I I found I found a fossil. What should I do with it? We encourage people that if you find something, you know, leave it right there where you find it. Take a photo of it and document it and get excited about it and leave it there for the next person to see.

Speaker 2:

You can, document it and send those photos to other paleontologists at local museums or maybe where you're from and reach out to them. And that helps us to be able to preserve and protect these things to where we can come out and study them and maybe excavate them. We've had volunteers out with us for the last two weeks helping us excavate in the parking lot there and you never know how, you know, maybe one small fossil that you find on the ground could be the very next big discovery. So it's kinda cool.

Speaker 1:

It's very cool. It's an exciting thought to have. Well, ReBecca, know we could talk probably forever but thank you so much for your time and it's been a blast getting to know you and and spend time here. So thank you for everything.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you for coming.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for checking out this edition of the Safe Travels Podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. ReBecca is an incredible paleontologist and I really hope you get the chance to come check out this amazing national monument. So if you like this type of content, it mean a whole lot to me if you followed or subscribed on whichever platform you're watching or listening on as it really does help out our podcast. And until next time, safe travels.