On a dino crusade in Utah, tracks dont always follow the map

December 31, 2014

Gray-green plateaus and rock formations in a palette of fiery oranges and browns take up much of the landscape on the 400-mile drive from St. George, Utah, to Dinosaur National Monument. Arid and sprawling, its not the subtropical terrain that made up the late Mesozoic era, but that didnt stop the 5-year-old aspiring paleontologist in the back seat from imagining a hungry allosaurus or herd of sauropods pounding across the land in search of dinner.

Were in dinosaur land, Theo chanted repeatedly.

Indeed, we had gone to Utah on the trail of dinosaurs. My sons fascination with the giant reptiles began at age 2; three years later, his bedtime stories still feature triceratops and stegosaurus, and the majority of his toy collection can be split into two categories: carnivores and herbivores.

So it seemed like a good time to expose him and his 9-year-old brother, Jack, to the real land of the allosaurus and brachiosaurus. Last spring, the kids, their dad, John, and I set out from Los Angeles to Utah on a seven-day road trip across a craggy, ever-changing landscape to Dinosaur National Monument, the mother ship for any enthusiast of the prehistoric beasts.

Home of the 30-foot-long meat-eating allosaurus (its the state fossil), Utah has some of the countrys richest fossil deposits and what scientists believe is the worlds largest concentration of bones of carnivorous dinosaurs. No one knows why theyre there, says Ken Carpenter, director of the Utah State Universitys Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price. Theres something odd that attracted predators to that site, and then they died, he said.

We managed to squeeze in a few modern-day attractions along our route, but ultimately we all ended up embracing the dinosaur culture right along with Theo. We learned about Andrew Carnegies role in the Gold Rush-like search for fossils that swept the country in the late 19th century, and found dinosaur links in such unexpected places as Pipe Spring National Monument near the Arizona border and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. On a lighter note, we picked up pterodactyl-hunting licenses at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum and snapped photos of the giant pink brachiosaurus statue and other Flintstonesesque kitsch that marks Vernal, the town closest to Dinosaur National Monument.

All in all, it was a vacation full of unexpected discoveries you get only on a road trip that doesnt always follow the map.

Prehistoric prints

St. George, two hours north of Las Vegas, was our first stop. Home to a small museum, the town is known more as the gateway to Zion National Park than as rich dinosaur territory. Yet the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm is a jackpot for anyone with even a passing interest in the prehistoric world. Built atop a sandstone slab that holds some of the oldest and best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world, it opened in 2008 after a local optometrist, Sheldon Johnson, discovered tracks as he was leveling a hill on his property. Research revealed an early Jurassic lakeside environment with hundreds of tracks left by meat eaters and swimmers, including the footprints and foreleg marks of a crouching dinosaur, one of only five such impressions ever found.

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On a dino crusade in Utah, tracks dont always follow the map