Art + Science FTW!
This outstanding wall art can be seen at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park in Vernal, Utah @utahfieldhouse. It is a visual tour de force, the longer one looks at it the more one discovers. The artist (can someone tell me who did it?) must have spent an incredible amount of time selecting what pieces went where. The display pleases those with an eye for art and for a love of paleo. Have both? Prepare to be delighted doubly so!
The Green River Formation is one of the world’s treasures, producing some of the finest paleontological specimens ever discovered. Fossil bats, horses, fish of all sorts, invertebrates, leaves, the list goes on and on! The fossils result from just the right preservational combination of a quiet lake bottom and regular anoxic events.
The world of the #Eocene, ~50 mya, in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, was a sub-tropical paradise with two major seasons: wet and dry. A far cry from the high deserts of today, with its sparse plantlife (in comparison to the tropics!), high winds, and brutal winters.
The non-avian #dinosaurs went extinct 66 mya, fast forward 13 million years and birds are aplenty as evidenced by the numerous families, much less genera and species, found across the 6 or so million years the lakes accumulated flyers, waders, divers, and shorebirds. Yet these dinosaurs never reclaim the throne lost via the big sky rock. Mammals finally take control, after having failed to at all prior large to massive extinctions. I suppose after the amphibians, crocodylomorphs, and dinosaurs had had their run, these constantly-underfoot furballs finally evolved their chance.
The Vernal museum has become one of my favorites. Aside from this cool art wall, there is a massive petrified tree with a giant knot in it, the world’s most important #Haplocanthosaurus that still awaits a description 24 years later from when I first learned of it, and, of course, Dippy the #Diplodocus! The most famous #sauropod #dinosaur ever discovered, with casts handed out like M&Ms by Andrew Carnegie for “dinosaur diplomacy,” being given to kings and rulers to showcase his wealth.
#FossiLCrates
Fossil Crates