smithsonianmag.com

As any Jurassic World fan could tell you, the soft tissues of ancient animals are supposed to be some of the first things to vanish in the fossilization process. While bones and teeth can be preserved for hundreds of millions of years, protein molecules decay in a mere 4 million years, leaving behind only traces of those building blocks of life.

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Dig into this with your morning jolt!

good4utah.com

They’ve been buried for tens of millions of years and now dozens of dinosaurs are being unearthed on BLM land in Utah.

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Ever found yourself wondering if one day you’d be a fossil next to your favorite dinosaur in the museum? Smithsonian Magazine has some steps in this fun article of theirs to follow to achieve this global star status down the road.

smithsonianmag.com

Have you ever found yourself standing in a museum, gazing up at the skeleton of a mighty T-Rex with envy and thought “one day, that’ll be me”? Becoming a fossil is a quick and effortless way to become a global superstar. But just how do you become one? Here are five simple ways to increase the chances that your bones could one day find a home next to a velociraptor.

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Dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes.

smithsonianmag.com

After over a century and a half of discovery, you’d think dinosaurs would start getting a little mundane. Paleontologists have already described over 500 different genera of the prehistoric celebrities, and the shape of the dinosaur family tree is well known. But almost on a monthly basis, paleontologists describe new saurians that set social media afire with cries of “What is that thing?” The unexpectedly herbivorous Chilesaurus did so earlier this week, and now, hot on its scaly heels, comes Yi qi—the “strange wing”.

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Happy Friday! Take a minute to enjoy Discovery Canada’s short on our Paleontologists here at the Utah Geological Survey and their work on the nearly 9-ton fossil block containing a family of Utahraptor. See James Kirkland, Scott Madsen, Don DeBlieux, and help from others as they unravel their Utahraptor puzzle.

discovery.ca

SEE IT HERE

ksl.com

The original Utahns weren’t nearly as willing to bring you a casserole, but who wants to look at fossilized Relief Society presidents?

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smithsonianmag.com

Rays of ultraviolet light—the same wavelengths that stream from black lights to give funky fluorescence to a rave—can be used to uncover secrets usually invisible to human eyes. A UV camera can expose sun damage to skin, show how carnivorous plants lure ants and highlight hints of feathers still clinging to dinosaur fossils. Now researchers are using UV light to coax color from porcelain white seashell fossils.

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kutv.com

A 125-million-year-old fossil was delivered to Thanksgiving Point’s Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, nearly 15 years after a graduate student discovered the dinosaur site.

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Stikes Utahraptor excavation 1 Scott Madsen
UGS paleontologist Scott Madsen cutting the plaster jacket off of the bottom of a block from the Stikes Utahraptor excavation. This roughly 1,000 lb block, dubbed “The Mushroom”, and containing the remains of Iguanodont and Utahraptor dinosaurs, was collected from on top of the large 18,000 lb. block of dinosaur fossils that was dragged off of a mesa in eastern Utah in the fall of 2014.

Stikes Utahraptor excavation 2 Scott Madsen
Scott Madsen begins the preparation of “The Mushroom” in the UGS paleontological laboratory.