Parks Stewardship Forum

Dinosaur National Monument was established in 1915 to protect and preserve the globally significant paleontological resources of the Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry. The park was expanded in 1938 and now protects 210,844.02 acres in northeastern Utah and northwestern Colorado. Extensive inventory, monitoring, excavation, and research work has taken place in the monument, mostly focusing on the Late Jurassic-age Morrison Formation over the past 113 years since the Carnegie Quarry’s discovery in 1909. This work has helped to increase not only our knowledge of the dinosaur fauna, but also of the less well-known reptiles, amphibians, mammals, invertebrates, and plant communities that lived alongside these Jurassic giants. To protect and preserve these notable fossil discoveries, Dinosaur National Monument has explored several approaches. Public tours of the Carnegie Quarry have taken place since its discovery in 1909. In the early 1950s the monument erected a temporary building over a portion of the remaining Carnegie Quarry to protect and display in situ fossils, with the more extensive permanent construction of the Quarry Visitor Center completed in 1958, including a fossil preparation laboratory and museum collections space. Over time this structure was affected by the constant movement of the bedrock, requiring its overhaul in the early 2000s, resulting in today’s Quarry Exhibit Hall. The park’s museum collections were recently relocated to a facility at the Utah Field House Museum of Natural History State Park, where new facilities and a preparation laboratory are available to accommodate these extensive fossil collections. Other in situ fossil resources in the park have been made accessible along the Fossil Discovery Trail, or through tours to active quarries. Most of the fossil resources in the park are not suited for in situ display and require traditional excavation and curation practices.