Dinosaur National Monument Quarry
north of Jensen
Uintah County, Utah
Photo: License: Public Domain
The "Dinosaur Wall" located within the Quarry building in Dinosaur National Monument consists of a steeply tilted rock layer which contains hundreds of dinosaur fossils. The rock has been chipped away to reveal the fossil bones for public viewing.
Bodies of dinosaurs and other animals were carried by an ancient river system to this location. The pile of sediments were later buried and lithified into solid rock.
The layers of rock were later uplifted and tilted to their present angle by the mountain building forces. The relentless forces of erosion exposed the layers at the surface to be found by paleontologists.
The dinosaur fossil beds (bone beds) were discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working and collecting for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He and his crews excavated thousands of fossils and shipped them back to the museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for study and display.
Dinosaur National Monument Quarry Categories
-
President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the dinosaur beds found in this park as Dinosaur National Monument in 1915. The monument boundaries were expanded in 1938 to its present size, including land in Utah and Colorado.
