Qualla: Dinosaur National Monument

Dinosaur National Monument: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew Dillon from Hollywood, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Paleontologist Earl Douglass came to Utah in 1909 searching for mammal fossils. What he found instead would make headlines worldwide: eight vertebrae of an Apatosaurus jutting from a sandstone ridge on the southeast flank of the Uinta Mountains. That single discovery opened a window into the Jurassic Period, revealing one of the richest dinosaur graveyards ever found. President Woodrow Wilson protected the site in 1915, and today the bones still emerge from the rock exactly where ancient rivers deposited them 150 million years ago.

Image: Matthew Dillon from Hollywood, CA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Dinosaur National Monument: The Ancient River's Gift

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Park Service, Public domain. The rock layer that holds these treasures is the Morrison Formation, a sandstone and conglomerate bed from the Jurassic Period. One hundred fifty million years ago, a river system wound through this landscape, carrying the carcasses of dinosaurs and other creatures to their final...

Image: National Park Service | Public domain

Dinosaur National Monument: Layers of Human Story

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. Long before paleontologists arrived, the Yampa and Green Rivers sustained human life in this arid country for at least 10,000 years. The Fremont people lived in these canyons from roughly 200 to 1300 AD, leaving petroglyphs and pictographs on the canyon walls. They sheltered unde...

Image: NPS | Public domain

Dinosaur National Monument: A Land of Extremes

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Park Service, Public domain. Straddling the Utah-Colorado border, Dinosaur National Monument spans 210,000 acres of proposed wilderness where the Green and Yampa Rivers converge. Elevations range from 4,700 to 9,000 feet, and the climate swings between summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and...

Image: National Park Service | Public domain

Dinosaur National Monument: The Wall of Bones

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Burley Packwood, CC BY-SA 4.0. The quarry that made this monument famous remains its centerpiece. The "Wall of Bones" displays thousands of fossils still embedded in their original positions, tilted at that dramatic 67-degree angle. Douglass and his Carnegie Museum crews excavated specimens from 1909 to 1922, ...

Image: Burley Packwood | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dinosaur National Monument: Protecting a Wilderness

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dinosaur National Monument from USA, Public domain. The monument almost lost its wildest reaches. In the 1950s, the proposed Echo Park Dam would have flooded the river canyons that give Dinosaur its second identity. Conservationists fought back, and the Colorado River Storage Project Act of 1956 explicitly stated that no dam or re...

Image: Dinosaur National Monument from USA | Public domain