sciencedaily.com

A remarkable new species of tyrannosaur has been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), southern Utah. The huge carnivore inhabited Laramidia, a landmass formed on the western coast of a shallow sea that flooded the central region of North America, isolating western and eastern portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 95-70 million years ago. The newly discovered dinosaur, belonging to the same evolutionary branch as the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, was announced today in the open-access scientific journal PLOS ONE and unveiled on exhibit in the Past Worlds Gallery at the Natural History Museum of Utah at the Rio Tinto Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Kane County, Utah.
Photographer: Michael Vanden Berg

Beetle on rippled dune face, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Kane County, Utah.

usu.edu

Utah State University’s Department of Geology announces the opening of a new museum on the school’s Logan campus, along with the return of the department’s popular ‘Rock and Fossil Day,’ Saturday, Nov. 9, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

All ages are invited to the free event, which features a variety of hands-on educational activities along with admission to museum exhibits.

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blogs.kqed.org

For something that is supposed to keep track of 4 billion years of history, the geologic time scale is quite a fuzzy and slippery yardstick. After two centuries of careful research and argumentation, the world’s geologists have only recently adopted a system to literally nail down the different time periods taught in geology school. Last week that project took another slow step forward as a “golden spike” was officially driven into a precise spot on the ground near Pueblo, Colorado, a benchmark for the beginning of the Turonian Age.

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nps.gov

Cambrian Fossils in Utah’s West Desert, Millard County

Utah is recognized for having the longest and most diverse dinosaur record in the nation. Yet, the Cambrian rocks in Utah’s West Desert contain one of our nation’s best records of the early evolution of life on Earth. View a slideshow of rocks and fossils from the West Desert here. During the Cambrian Period, North America straddled the Equator and the continent was oriented nearly 90 degrees clockwise of its present position. The Cambrian coastline extended north-south across Utah shifting southward (our east) with rising sea level. This resulted in a nearly complete sequence of Cambrian rocks preserved in Utah’s West Desert on what was the northern coastline of early North America. When Tertiary extension forces formed the Basin and Range Geological Province throughout the last 20 million years, these Cambrian rocks became well-exposed across western and central Utah, revealing the extraordinary fossil record within. Nowhere is this geology better exposed than in Millard County, Utah. Refer to Hintze and Davis (2003) (17 MB PDF) for a detailed discussion of the county’s geology. The Cambrian is best known for the “Cambrian Explosion” (or “Cambrian Radiation”) , when a great diversity of multicellular animals first appears. The first scientific report on these fossils was a description of Elrathia kingii in 1860, probably the world’s most well-known trilobite species.

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Desolation Canyon, Emery County, Utah
Photographer: Tyler Knudsen

Rippled sand bar along the Green River in Desolation Canyon, Emery County, Utah

Snow Canyon State Park, Washington County, Utah
Photographer: Michael Vanden Berg

Eroded cross-beds in the Navajo Sandstone capture spherical hematite (iron oxide) concretions that have weathered out of  overlying strata. The Navajo Sandstone comprises “fossilized” sand dune deposits of Early Jurassic age.

deseretnews.com

Have a hankering to see a hoodoo? Do you find argillite alluring? Savor scallops, and not the seafood kind?

Those vastly unique geologic features showcased in landscapes across Utah are captured in the photography displayed by the 2014 Utah Geology Calendar, an annual tradition that reflects the work and expertise of geologists with the Utah Geological Survey.

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Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Kane County, Utah.
Photographer: Tyler Knudsen

Iron oxide-stained sandstone at “Yellow Rock,” Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Kane County, Utah.