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Show GC Sunday, July 4, 1993 HORIZONS Right: Visitors will find skeleton casts of a meat-eating allosaurus and a plant-eating camptosaurus at CEU Prehistoric Museum's‘pit.' 7 Peis Below: Don Burge, the director and curator of paleontology at the museum, eta ae discusses ongoing research projects in the area. Price From 1C own backyard. “There were so many dinosaur bones lying around, people would use them in their gardens to line their walkways,” Burge remembers. The museum itself comes from fairly humble beginnings. Shortly after arriving in Price, Burge began teaching a night class in geology to a group of enthusiastic rockhounds, the cow-conking Ray Downard among them (he later served on the museum's boardof directors). As part of the class, these geology buffs would regularly bring their artifacts for a kind of showandtell, and before long, it became obvious they had the makings of a darn fine museum. In 1961, the group organized CEU’s Prehistoric Museum, with Burge acting as curator and director. They talked the mayorinto giving them a small classroom on the second floor of city Enjoy these dinosaursites in ( hall, filled the room with showcases — some from a store Butch Cassidy once robbed in what was once nearby Castle Gate and slowly began building a collection. In 1966, the museum’s first dinosaur skeleton, “Al the Allosaurus,” was assembled at Brigham Young University, then transported to Price where it was set up in the hall outside the classroom. Since the small college didn’t have a vehicle large enoughto transport a fully assembled allosaurus, Burge had to borrow a Lucky Lager beer truck to pick it up. A beer truck on an LDS church school campus is a bit conspicuous; according to Burge, they were stopped by campus police while attempting to move the fossil. Today, “Al” is the museum’s mascot and stands prominently on the museum’s main floor. Throughout the 60s, the museum continued to expand rapidly, and Burge loves to say that during this time the may- or was afraid to go on vacation for fear the museum would take over his office too. Finally, “in self-defense,” Burge says, the city gave the ever-expanding museum an old gymnasium in the cityoffices, and in the early 1970s, the museum moved downStairs to its larger quarters and “started to collect big-time dinosaurs,” according to Burge. m The College of Eastern Utah’s Prehistoric Museum, 155 E. Main, Price, is open from 10 there, take State Road 10 south outof Price toward Huntington and Castle Dale. About 14 mi- will be inch just across | a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondaythrough Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, throughout the summer. Admission is a suggested donation of $1 per person or $2 per family. Phone numberfor the museum is 637-5060. les south of Price, turn left onto State Road 155, mation on 1 then follow the signs through the town of Elmo and to the quarry, about 17 milesafter leaving SR 10. Much of the 17 milesis gravel, but the road is aThe Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend. No charge. To get graded well. The Museum of the San Rafael, a new natural history museum, is scheduled to open Aug. | in Castle Dale, south of Price. A dinosaur room ain the | related opti saur Trail, guided wal bones, track U.S. 191 is eters Four years ago, an addition was completed, which doubled the size of the museum. Today, CEU’s Prehistoric Museum doesn’t draw the crowds that Vernal’s Dinosaur National Monument does, but Burge says the two aren’t in competition for visitors. The cities of Price, Vernal and Grand Junction, Colo.. have been promoting what theycall the “Dinosaur Triangle,” the area of eastern Utah and western Colorado connecting the three. However, Burge believes it might better be called the “Dinosaur Polygon,” adding the dinosaurcollections at BYU, the University of Utah and Moab. These dino destinations have been getting some public relations help from the new “Jurassic Park” movie; Burge says attendance at his museum is up about 20 percent. However, while he believes the movie has helped, “the truth is that interest in dinosaurs has grown over the last five years.” In the next few years, Burge hopes to fuel that growing interest in dinosaurs by mounting casts of the nodosaurus and utahraptor, the two new- est dinosaurs now being exca- from downtown Price, the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry is, in Burge’s words, “the most productive Jurassic quarry in the country, if not the world.” vated near Moab. Despite its worldwide fame, however, the Cleveland-Lloyd No trip to the Price area would be complete without a side trip to the ClevelandLloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County. is somewhat of a forgotten quarry. Off the beaten path, it “We have the real Jurassic Park,” says John Bird, a Bureau of Land Management ranger who worksin the quarry’s visitors’ center, his claim echoing that of the folks at Dinosaur National Monument. Bird says a case could be made that the movie was actually misnamed. “Most of the dinosaurs in ‘Jurassic Park’ are actually from the Cretaceous Period — T. rex, triceratops, raptors,” Bird said. “But ‘Cretaceous Park’ just doesn’t sound the same, does it?” About 30 to 45 minutes attracts nowhere near the number of people that Vernal’s Dinosaur National Monumentgets. open to the public and features a small visitors’ center, two modest metal buildings covering the dig site, and a nature walk that takes visitors past various remnants of dinosaurs. This quarry was first worked in the late 1920s. Since then, more than 18,000 bones have been taken out, representing at least 70 different animals. The uniqueness of the quar- special,” he said. “You don’t want to come If you wantreally big bones — the kind of large columns out here in a rainstorm,” he said. that held up the huge, four- One find the quarryis fa- legged sauropods like brontoSauruses — Bird says your best bet is Dinosaur National mous for is what maybe the world’s oldest dinosaur egg. “This quarry has been dated at late-Jurassic, 147 million years ago,” Bird said. “And most eggs have been from the Monument in Vernal. However, if you want to see the meat-eaters, the ferocious ones, the ones you’d make a monster movie about, Cleveland-Lloyd is the place. Cretaceous Period, 65 to 145 Bird said a numberoftheo- million years ago.” What’s more, just within the past monthorso, thefirst set ries exist that attempt to ex- of dinosaur tracks was found “They get over 100,000 visitors a year (officials at Dinosaur National Monument report more than a half million visitors last year) at their ry, according to Bird, is its plain concentration of meat-eating dinosaurs. In nature, only about 2 percent or 3 percent of dinosaurs were carnivores, he concentration of meat-eating quarry; we get just a little over 6,000,” says Bird. However, the BLM rangerbelieves that said. However, of the dino- La Brea Tar Pits. Millions of saurs removed from Cleveland-Lloyd, a full two-thirds — 44 in all — have been years ago, the Cleveland-Lloyd area was a huge bog. A dinosaur would get caught in the point them outto us,” mused Bird. bog, and whenpacksofallo- of Nintendo and MTV, children expect bright, flashy, neon-colored things. Dinosaurs can’t provide that. “A lot of kids who come out can actually be an advantage. “We can give a lot more meat-eating allosaurs. And if personal attention,” he said. Although the quarry is not currently being excavated you’re talking carnivores — those dinosaurs that preyed on other dinosaurs — you're (BYU has worked the quarry looking at three-fourths of the in the past, but already has a backlog of unprepared bones quarry’s bone production. “The number of predators here is what makes this dig on its Provo campus), it is why such a dinosaurs has been found in one quarry. One theory he likes comparesthe area to the sauruses moved in for the kill, they’d get stuck as well. Bird says this theory gains credibility every timeit rains. The dirt road leading to the at the quarry, belonging to a camptosaurus. “They’ve been right under our nose for years, but it took a sedimentologist from back East to come out here and Bird laments that in this age here,if they’re notreally inter- quarry becomesa mire for vis- ested in dinosaurs, they get itors’ vehicles. bored easily because here you Vernal —— Dan Chure, the museum's paleontologist, wants to revamp the perception of a dinosaur as a big lizard. He wants to shift our questions from ‘Where were these bones found?’ to 'Whatdid that critter eat?’ or 'How did it walk?’ At right, Doug Chesire, 10, of Bishop, Calif., checks out a bone found in the Dinosaur National Monument's wall of bones, which tourists inspect at far right. From 1C covery and remain to the present, the best skeletons known of their species.” “This is a world-class quarry,” said paleontologist Sue Ann Bilbey, the curator at the nearby Utah State Field House of Natural Histo- H ry in Vernal. And this endorsement comes from Sidney Ash, chairman of Weber State University’s geology deartment: “Dinosaur (Monument) is right at the top as far as dinosaur quarries go.” Scientists from around the world come to Dinosaur for research — “It’s like ‘Field of Dreams’: If you have specimens, they will come,” said Chure. And fossils from this Utah quarry travel internationally — a scientist in England, for instance, is inspecting a fossil lizard specimen, while dinosaur-era frogs are under the microscope at the Carnegie Museum of Natural His- tory Museum in Pittsburgh. Ash, himself, was in the park last summer to studyfossil plants when he came upon what Chure later determined to be a camptosaurus em- bryo — a find that made scientific news. But ordinary visitors come to awk at the bony rock face and exibits of what Chure, in jest, has described as the real Jurassic Park. Here, the dry bones may be the stars, but the images they inspire — The | _— brontosaurus, ferocious al- dinosa known osaurus — are the stuff of imagination, The monument’s chapter of the but me so of 1 Jurassic cra was played out 140 million years to 150 million years ago — about midpoint in the. Age of Dinosaurs. This patch of land soil th accumi represents a snapshot of about 8 section broke million years of time, In th that er |