Dinosaurs!!!!!

From Dutch John, Route 191 to Vernal and on to Dinosaur National Monument

 Flaming Gorge Dam!  We will tour it on our way back :)

 Gorgeous bridge coming up !!

 The road to the summit needs more guard rails!!!!

 WE love how there are signs through out the drive that explain what fossils can be found in each layer of strata

 Petrified Sand Dunes

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominguez-Escalante_Expedition

 Checking their Junior Ranger booklets

 On the tram heading to the quarry !!!

Very surreal.  The dinosaurs got swept away in what was once a river. 

 Can you see the vertebrae?

 See the skull, teeth and vertebrae?

 Big Femur!!!!

 New discoveries being made all of the time.

 Fossilized turtle

 Entrance to Dinosaur National Monument

 The bridge used to be a train car.

Paleontologist Earl Douglass discovered and began excavating the fossils in 1909.  Today, the area is a 210,000 acre national monument .  The dinosaur quarry is in a rock layer called the Morrison Formation, whose fossils were deposited in  so many environments that scientists can reconstruct how the area looked 150 million years ago.

People lived in the area for thousands of years.  Petroglyphs are scattered through out the park.

 The bridge across Flaming Gorge.

 Flaming Gorge damn

 Driving across the damn.