nationalgeographic.com Claim to fame: In 2001, paleontologists Jim Kirkland and Doug Wolfe named a very strange dinosaur. Relatively little of its skeleton was known – a few vertebrae, part of an arm, part of a leg, and a piece of hip bone found in northern New Mexico – but it was enough to identify the animal […]
fox13now.com The red rock arches of southeastern Utah attract visitors from around the world. The majestic structures have stood for thousands of years, but they could possibly collapse over time. READ MORE
smithsonianmag.com The fouled waters of the Animas River are slowly clearing, but the widespread hazards posed by toxic mine waste will be with us for centuries. READ MORE
nationalgeographic.com More than 143 million Americans live in an earthquake zone, a new analysis shows, though many of them may be surprised to learn that dangerous shaking is possible in the places where they live. READ MORE
sltrib.com Researchers sifting through deposits of owl pellets in Utah’s Homestead Cave have discovered that small-mammal communities scurrying around the West Desert remained stable through millennia of climate change. READ MORE
heraldextra.com I’m pretty sure most of us had a rock collection when we were kids. Nothing very impressive, but personally I enjoyed finding cool looking rocks and trying to find out how they were made. READ MORE
natureworldnews.com Things are humming right along at Arches National Park. That is, scientists who wondered about possible internal damage in the 88-foot-long Mesa Arch at Canyonlands National Park-one of more than 2,000 sandstone arches in two national parks in that part of Utah–now have an answer. They learned by employing seismometers to hear the arches’ […]
smithsonianmag.com Some boulders defy gravity. Despite balancing on other rocks in the midst of fault lines, they stay precariously perched — thanks in part to those fault lines brushing up against each other, geologists report in the journal Seismological Research Letters. READ MORE
The prestigious 2015 Crawford Award was presented to UGS geologists Hugh Hurlow, Stefan Kirby, Lucy Jordan, Paul Inkenbrandt, Janae Wallace, and Mike Lowe in recognition of their combined work on the outstanding geologic publication Hydrogeologic Studies and Groundwater Monitoring in Snake Valley and Adjacent Hydrographic Areas, West-Central Utah and East-Central Nevada (UGS Bulletin 135). This […]
mapstore.utah.gov Few places have a better fossil record of Cambrian life than Utah. In Exceptional Cambrian Fossils from Utah—A Window Into the Age of Trilobites, the authors present an exhaustive summary of invertebrate fossils collected from Utah’s Spence, Wheeler, Marjum, and Weeks Formations. The fossils include sponges, corals, comb jellies, snails, velvet worms, and of […]
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.