The Collections

Once upon a time, I had an internship doing paleontology at Dinosaur National Monument. This year, I had cause to correspond this year with the new park paleontologist regarding that long-ago summer, and she invited me to stop by if I was ever in the area. So when I went back for my vacation this summer, I did indeed stop in to meet her.

We had a very nice conversation. She said she would love to arrange a tour for me of the park's collections in Vernal, so one day I went down to see them.

Entering the warehouse was like walking into that hangar at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where crates of mysteries are stacked in rows as far as the eye can see. In this case it was row after row of shelves and tall white metal cabinets. Unlike in a (mythical) top-secret government hangar, I was allowed to take pictures. I did not take notes because it was bad enough juggling the camera. I meant to write the blog entry immediately after, but many things intervened. I am writing it for you now having forgotten most of the detail, like the terrible chronicler I am.

Turtle bones.

So... I have a terrible confession to make. Though I did not one but two internships in paleontology, I'm really more interested in geology aspect of the science, in the reconstruction of ancient landscapes, than in the animals. I suppose I have always been more of a landscape person than an animal person, the human animal included. Unless you count when I was quite young and was gifted a subscription Cat Fancy magazine that I pored over with intense interest.

But even then, what I liked about cats was that you could pet them, not their bones.

So. The man who gave me the tour spoke to me without any condescension whatsoever, treating me as a fellow professional, and reeling off names of various ancient reptiles as if I understood any of it. I nodded along, too ashamed to admit that I wasn't that into dinosaurs. In fact I didn't realize we were going to be looking at so many bones. I was relieved when he pulled these out:

But to my dismay I found they were gastroliths. These are rocks that many animals, including dinosaurs, have swallowed for addition to their gizzard or stomach, to help grind or digest food.

Here are teeth from a thing:

Below, more teeth, possibly from a... camptosaurus? (If they see this, they're going to go back in time and fire me from my internship. Which, by the way, was a summer of looking for tracks fossilized in the sediment, not for bones.)

We are learning that I am not much of a paleontologist. But since I have worked a certain number of hours in fossil preparation (the art of removing fossils from rock and getting them ready for storage or display), fossil prep became the focus of most of my questions. It was about the only subject I could ask intelligent questions on.

We spoke of how the customs of fossil preparation have changed over time. The bone at center, below, has uniform gray areas where it was filled in, to give the bone its original shape back.

This is no longer the favored practice. Now, bones are left as they are.

Here, tiny teeth are glued to the undersides of corks in vials for ease of study:

These bones had housings lovingly carved out of styrofoam and padded with what is possibly toilet paper:

They had a good number of specimens that had been dug up by teams from many years ago, and had been shored up with plaster and burlap and even door screen material to both keep the bones intact and fill them out to their original, unbroken shapes. This is no longer how things are done, and in fact it made me wince a bit to see the bones so adulterated, but the specimens are now so old that some question has arisen of whether they ought to be left as they are, preserved as they are, as an example of how paleontology was conducted in "the old days," rather than being... well, restored to naked-and-broken condition.

This idea, that a thing could last long enough to become wrong and a candidate for undoing, and then last long enough again to become an artifact and a candidate for preserving, has a fascination to it.

But bones were not the only thing housed in the collections. Here are the tools used by paleontologist Earl Douglass, who from 1909 -1924 managed the famous Carnegie Quarry that is now within the boundaries of the park.

The first thing I think upon seeing these is how wonderfully sturdy and useful everything looks, unlike the various plastic tools and implements that fill stores nowadays.

We did eventually come upon some samples of various rock formations within the park. Look how colorful!

That was it for the rocks. But rocks and bones were not the only things the warehouse housed. It also held what seemed to be the largest part of a collection of paintings by Ernest Untermann, Sr.

Untermann was a German-born renaissance man... sailor, author, geologist, artist... who donated many paintings to the Monument. Some of his paintings remain on display in the museum of Vernal, but the rest may have been relegated to the warehouse, presumably due not only to lack of museum space, but to the fact that time has rendered some of his details scientifically inaccurate.

For instance, this painting shows several adversarial species of dinosaur chumming together.

In truth, I liked Untermann's landscapes of the modern-day Monument, and have considered getting a print. But there is no doubt that a few of his paintings probably should not be on display anywhere.

But I've saved the best for last! Before I finished my tour, I was shown the wonder of wonders: the radioactive allosaurus.

Or at least, its cabinet. You will notice that the cabinet must be vented before being "used." This process involves the entire warehouse so it was not performed for me.

Why is there a radioactive allosaurus? Radioactive elements are a common component of bedrock and soils, so it's no wonder fossils end up absorbing radiation. Usually the amount of radioactivity in the rock beneath our feet (or the granite in our countertop) isn't enough to harm us, but sometimes it's more. In this case, the amount of radiation absorbed by the fossil turned out to helpful. The skeleton was originally found in 1990, but the skull was missing. Six years later, use of a radiation detector turned up the skull, and head and body were reunited.

And we can't see them. Given that tragedy, and despite the ridiculousness of the idea, I prefer to imagine them aglow inside their cabinet.

Stay tuned for more adventures in Utah!

A Week in Dinosaur National Monument

I'd planned to take a vacation in the mountains in August, but when it came time, the forecast said rain all week. So I looked for somewhere that wasn't going to be rainy and quickly settled on Dinosaur National Monument, where I'd worked the summer of 2011.

I was doubting my decision as I left Denver, because there were nothing but blue skies above me. And smoke.

A truck on fire just outside of town made for an inauspicious start. But I was soon validated in my decision, because by the time I reached the Continental Divide, thunder was booming.

Here, I took a little hike to stretch my legs. There were still fields of yellow wildflowers, though it was nearly the end of summer.

As I drove out onto the scrubby plains of western CO, storms pounded the land with intermittent rain.

Once at the park I found a nice campsite from which I could walk to a "beach" on the Green River.

It was oh-so-quiet that night--if you didn't count the nearly ear-splitting music of thousands of crickets--but I couldn't sleep. It was also quite hot, and would top 90 degrees the next few days.

With that in mind, I got up early the next morning for a pre-breakfast hike. It was quite nice at first, but by 8am the sun was beating down unpleasantly.

Making breakfast after my hike, I discovered that the ground squirrels at my site were truly brazen. It would become a problem throughout the week, as I couldn't turn my back on any food. If I so much as left my car open long enough to carry something to the picnic table, they would be in the car and eating through packages of food before I got back. Here, one tries to steal some oatmeal with me standing right there.

They also managed to find the bite valve on my hydration bladder. This is the second time I've had to replace a bite valve due to it being chewed on.

Ground squirrels weren't the only wildlife that was comfortable with humans. Here, a fawn wanders through, mewing like a kitten.

It was buggy at night, and sometimes difficult to enter the tent without letting them in. One morning, I opened my eyes to find two mayflies hanging above my nose. Then I realized it was just one mayfly, clinging beside its molt. This thing had felt comfy and safe enough to shed its entire skeleton, right above my face, while I slept. This was a first for me.

Another pest came out at noon: biting flies. I tried to work on my writing through all this, but eventually I gave up and went for a drive.

Along the river, I found where someone had laid out pebbles of all different colors. There are something like 23 different rock formations exposed in the Monument, an astounding amount. It makes a lovely place to look at rocks.

Within the boundaries of the park is a parcel of private land, a ranch. Irrigation devices sprayed water over bright green fields as the sun set.

I met another new friend in the bathroom that night. She'd be there all week. The bathrooms looked like no one had cleaned them since 1970, even after a staff member came by and cleaned them. If I didn't already love Dinosaur so much, it definitely would have put me off.

The next day, I continued with what would be my little routine: early morning hike, breakfast, then write in the shade at my site until ninety-degree noon and the biting flies hit. Then go for an air-conditioned drive, maybe with some brief side-hikes.

The central part of Dinosaur (an hour's drive from my campsite) is higher-elevation, cooler and breezier. It also has some great views.

Above is Mitten Park Fault. The actual fault is to the left of the layers that curve upward steeply.

For scale, see the whitewater rafts on the beach below:

Beyond the fault, the Green River winds through more canyons. Downstream a good ways, it will reach my campsite. Quite a bit further, it will join with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park.

Days when I returned to my campsite to find it warm and sunny, I could take a little dip in the Green River.

Or just sit with a book and a lukewarm seltzer.

I'd bought some firewood and I had meant to have a campfire some night, of course, but each evening it was just too hot. So I gave in and made a campfire for breakfast one morning instead. After I got the fire going, I grabbed my package of foil and tugged on the loose end. A few inches pulled off the now-bare cardboard roll. Not nearly enough to make a packet of food to stick in the coals.

Instead, I balanced the narrow strip of foil on the burning logs and kept shuffling things to make sure it all cooked. But it was incredibly delicious.

A few times I had cause to go into the nearest town, Vernal, which is a wonderful place to visit if you're a fiberglass dinosaur.

Here, I enjoyed working in the cool, air-conditioned library, and eating too much restaurant food.

At a barbecue place, I waffled on whether I wanted a giant rice krispie treat, and ended up declining. It was just too big. But I think my waffling confused the woman at the register, because she ended up including a krispie treat in my bag, but not on my bill. It took me several days to eat.

Did I mention the days were hot?

But the park was always pretty in the evening light.

The heat didn't let up when the sun set. But that made it easy to lie out on the picnic table at night and look at the stars.

Some more photos from hikes around the park. Look at those formations!

Other parts of the park are covered up, in this case with sagebrush.

Horned lizard:

Tiny baby horned lizard:

BLM rangeland surrounds the park, with its attendant non-wildlife.

This cow was followed around the next bend by a cowboy and cowgirl on horseback.

A distant view of the Green River:

One evening, I walked from one campground in the park to another along a trail, then got to talking with a ranger there. By the time I walked back, there was just enough light to follow the trail. Rather than turning on my headlamp, I walked along in the gloaming, looking at the stars.

Until I heard a rattle.

I stopped where I was and turned on the headlamp. Can you spot the rattlesnake? At that moment I was glad that rattlesnakes had rattles, for hikers who temporarily forget how snakes like to warm themselves on rocks even after the sun goes down.

As the week wore on I made friends in the campground, and even got invited for pancakes. But then the week ended.

On my last night, I burnt the rest of my wood, though it was really too hot for a fire.

The next morning I packed up and went for one last drive to snag a final few photos.

Here is the Morrison Formation, in which dinosaurs are found, and which always reminds me of melting Neapolitan ice cream:

A family of wild turkeys crosses the road:

Monarch:

Petroglyphs:

A pleasantly cool box canyon:

The homestead of pioneer Josie Morris, who lived alone and used the box canyon as a corral for livestock:

A damselfly:

An unmaintained trail that now goes nowhere:

On the long drive home, I stopped once again at the continental divide to stretch my legs.

The blooms were still blooming, but it was stormy and cold. On my walk I met a couple from Denver who were familiar with Dinosaur, and we reminsced about the park. It's always interesting to make random connections.

The temperature continued to fall as I drove east, until by the time I got home, I was schlepping my bags in a miserable, chilling rain. The next day, I saw it had snowed in the mountains.

This seemed too much. It was, after all, still August. I didn't need any reminders that winter would soon be here.

But we never have a choice about the seasons, do we?