Happy Friday, friends! Who’s getting out in the big Utah wild this weekend? Mystic Hot Springs is a great destination!
Travertine deposit at Mystic Hot Springs, Sevier County, Utah
Photographer: Paul Kuehne; © 2014
nationalgeographic.com
Over eight decades ago, while pondering the heavily-armored dinosaur Scolosaurus, the eccentric paleontologist Franz Nopcsa proposed what is probably one of the oddest ideas in the annals of paleobiological speculation. Scolosaurus was a low-slung quadruped that shuffled around what were then thought to be parched sand dunes. Even though its close ankylosaurian relatives had been interpreted as herbivores from the very start, the Cretaceous desert may have been nearly devoid of low-lying vegetation. But there was another source of food. Perhaps Scolosaurus was an insectivore, Nopcsa suggested, nabbing little arthropods as if the dinosaur were an overgrown horned toad.
nationalgeographic.com
Snakes can famously disarticulate their jaws, and open their mouths to extreme widths. David Martill from the University of Portsmouth did his best impression of this trick while walking through the Bürgermeister Müller Museum in Solnhofen, Germany. He was pointing out the museum’s fossils to a group of students. “And then my jaw just dropped,” he recalls.
kcsg.com
Have you ever seen a living dinosaur? You might be surprised. If dinosaurs were ‘cold-blooded’ would you expect to find a dinosaur skeleton in Antarctica? Have you ever wondered how the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon formed?
dailymail.co.uk
Button-sized fossil eggs have been found to contain the remains of the world’s oldest lizard embryos.
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Interview with Dr. Jim Kirkland, the paleontologist who named Utahraptor ostrommaysorum, a dinosaur (or raptor) with nine-inch claws.
Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Garfield County, Utah
Photographer: Photographer: Michael Vanden Berg; © 2014
Hematite concretions eroded from the Navajo Sandstone.
Washington County, Utah
Photographer: Mark Milligan; © 2014
Petroglyphs carved into desert varnish-covered sandstone near Ivins, Washington County.
Big things are happening in Moab. Have you heard of the Moab Giants Museum? Read more to find out about this wonderful new addition to southern Utah!
deseretnews.com
With the summer blockbuster “Jurassic World” opening in theaters, there’s plenty of opportunity to be entertained — or frightened — by dinosaurs.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UTAH GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
The Utah Geological Survey (UGS) is a division of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Several specialized programs comprise the UGS: Data Management, Energy & Minerals, Geologic Hazards, Geologic Information & Outreach, Geologic Mapping, Groundwater & Wetlands, and Paleontology.