Dinosaur country

On Tuesday this week, I had an interview in Provo. And since I was already down that far south, I decided to take the opportunity to hit up two more county seats: Price (Carbon County) and Castle Dale (Emery County).

It was fun to see the coal seams in Carbon County, just part of the landscape along the road. (But I still think coal is an absolutely terrible state rock for Utah.) I stopped at Price's prehistoric museum. The last time I went there (2011), I had taken a dinosaurs class, and I was technically a geology minor, but I hadn't taken any other geology classes. I have a lot more geological training now, but it has also been more than four years since I've done anything with it. Sadly, I don't geek out about it as much as I used to. They had various fossils, mostly Cretaceous, which is a bit unusual, because most Utah fossils I've seen have been Jurassic. They had a giant clam fossil,

 some 3D-printed reconstructions,

 and a stegosaurus plate with a bite taken out of it.

 They also had a Native American display, which doesn't interest me as much. Even though I feel guilty that it doesn't interest me as much. But I can only take so many arrowheads and pottery shards, you know? This summer I have really been learning more about Native culture and history. They did have some cool Pleistocene mammal displays, too. I bought some dinosaur socks and headed out to Castle Dale.

Castle Dale has a little museum with some random items in it. It wasn't a great museum, but they also didn't charge admission, except for asking for donations. They had taxidermied native animals,

I didn't know we had ring-tailed cats in Utah!

 a few fossils,

"Trilobites first life on Earth"? Umm, no...

 some more Native American displays, and Pleistocene mammals.

Their pioneer section was under construction.

After lunch, I headed out of Castle Dale. That really is a beautiful part of the state, with all the rock layers and differential erosion. But I guess people who live there would think our part of the state is beautiful. Since I was out that far already, I decided to go to the Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur quarry, which I had heard about but never visited.

I drove on a remote gravel road to get to the site. It cost five dollars to get in, which I was willing to pay, but I don't know if it would be worth that much for a lot of people. The visitor center didn't even have AC!

Cleveland-Lloyd had the densest collection of dinosaur fossils. But in earlier days of paleontology, they thought the bones were the only useful part. Now we recognize that the rocks and the original deposition are just as vital to understanding the fossil story. Few fossils have remained at the site, and many have been shipped to labs and museums all over the world. 

There were some trails you could wander, but I didn't have good shoes, and it was a hot day, and I still had a long drive home.

 They had a few fossils still in the ground on display, but many were replicas. It wasn't like Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal. But they were part of the Jurassic Morrison Formation, which is the same formation at DNM.

It was a fun diversion for a day off, since it's been a while since I've been absorbed in dinosaurs. Now I still have six counties and eight county seats to get to in the next two and a half months. 

On a geeky, frivolous note, I recently have been enchanted by, of all things, an Arby's commercial. When I first saw their Marketfresh Sandwiches in Summer commercial, I was instantly reminded of the Free Design, the band that sings "Kites Are Fun" (and which I have blogged about here and here).

I thought, "Surely I can't be the only one who thinks this sounds like the Free Design." So I Googled it, and it turns out it's one of their songs, which I didn't know! It's great to see this obscure band getting some attention, even if no one knows the commercial is a parody.