Tag Archive for: Bureau of Land Management

ksl.com

Bureau of Land Management workers are removing two dinosaur tracks in Moab to prevent them from being damaged.

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ksl.com

The Bureau of Land Management has rejected an effort by a mining company to resurrect a controversial project in a pristine chunk of unforgiving desert 20 miles north of Wendover.

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stgeorgeutah.com

The Bureau of Land Management-Utah Henry Mountain Field Station is partnering with the Burpee Museum of Rockford, Illinois, to conduct free guided tours at the Hanksville-Burpee Dinosaur Quarry. Daily tours for the public began May 29 and continue through June 7. No tours will be offered on Sunday, June 1.

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deseretnews.com

Weighing in at more than 2 tons and two dozen feet long, a new species of dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus rex was fierce enough to be dubbed “King of Gore.” The discovery of “Lythronax argestes” at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah was announced Wednesday at the Natural History Museum of Utah and coincides with the publication of a study in PLoS ONE, an open access scientific journal.

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sltrib.com

Had Utah’s newest dinosaur not gone extinct, it might have evolved into a highly intelligent creature, scientists speculate.

“Its skull is six times larger than other dinosaurs,” said Scott Foss, regional paleontologist with the Bureau of Land Management.

But Geminiraptor suarezarum’s large brain case is not its only unique feature. It had an inflatable upper jaw bone and feathers on its arms and legs and, as Utah’s eighth new dinosaur species of the year, it’s a record breaker, too.

“One [find] is unusual, eight is outstanding,” said Scott Foss, regional paleontologist with the Bureau of Land Management, of the newest creature featured in a paper published Wednesday in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The upper jaw bone of the meat-eating creature, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, was discovered in 2004 in a formation in the Crystal Geyser area near Green River, where it lived 125 million years ago. It is the oldest species found in North America belonging to the “raptor-like” troodon group of dinosaurs.

Foss said worldwide there about 700 named dinosaurs.

“This string of dinosaur descriptions means that a full one percent of all known dinosaur species were described from lands in Utah during 2010,” said Foss. “That’s what’s interesting and fun about this.”

Seven of the new species were found on BLM land and one in Dinosaur National Monument.

State paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who co-authored the paper and was at the site when the discovery was made, said the jawbone is hollow and could be inflated “like a balloon.”

Kirkland said he is unaware of such a characteristic in other fossilized dinosaurs and can only speculate on its purpose.

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