July 5, 2011
Dinosaur Diamond: Utah Field House of Natural History
A reconstruction of Stegosaurus at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah.
There are dinosaurs everywhere in Vernal, Utah. A old-school sauropod advertises for a Best Western hotel, a pair of tussling Allosaurus skeletons adorns the side of a downtown building, and a bikini-clad version of Vernal’s dinosaur mascot, Dinah, invites visitors for a swim on a fading sign along the town’s main drag. But if you want a look at real dinosaurs—or at least the casts of real dinosaur skeletons reassembled into their natural forms—you have to stop by the Utah Field House of Natural History.
If you come at the museum from the east along Main Street, you can’t miss it—a huge, green Tyrannosaurus yawns from behind a wall which encloses a trail of classic dinosaur sculptures. These aren’t the lithe, agile animals of Walking With Dinosaurs or even modern museum displays like those inside the museum itself, but bulky creatures which represent an outdated—but not forgotten—image of prehistoric life. These are your father’s dinosaurs.
The interior of the museum is a different story. Casts of Allosaurus and Diplodocus skeletons greet visitors in the spacious foyer, and a nearby alcove displays reproductions of some of the most impressive skeletons discovered at Dinosaur National Monument (itself a 20 minute drive east, straight out of town). There’s a cast of the beautiful, articulated skeleton of the juvenile Camarasaurus which is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the real gem is a reproduction of the slightly jumbled skeleton of Allosaurus jimmadseni. The specimen represents a second species of Allosaurus (currently on its way to scientific publication) and honors the late James Madsen, Utah’s first state paleontologist and the author of the impressive monograph Allosaurus fragilis: A Revised Osteology. (I was actually surprised to find a hard copy of Madsen’s study for sale in the gift shop for a paltry $11—a find that made this paleo-nerd very happy, indeed.)
From the expansive foyer, visitors to the museum can walk through a winding corridor that leads through several glimpses of prehistory in eastern Utah. Though I was there for the dinosaurs, I have to say that the exhibit on the fossils of the approximately 45-million-year-old Green River Formation was especially impressive, including a gorgeous collage of well-preserved plant fossils making up one of the exhibit’s walls. Given the proximity of the museum to Dinosaur National Monument, though, the stars of the museum are the dinosaurs in the Jurassic exhibit.
Inside the dim interior of the dinosaur hall, a Stegosaurus and Allosaurus strike poses in front of a beautiful mural of life during the days of the Morrison Formation, while a prostrate and decapitated skeleton of the sauropod Haplocanthosaurus helps demonstrate the enduring nature of fossil mysteries. Since paleontologists don’t know what the head of Haplocanthosaurus looked like, the exhibit explains, the head of the dinosaur restored in the mural is only a temporary sketch taped onto the painting until a skull is found. This kind of humor and use of specimens to highlight fossil mysteries make the Utah Field House of Natural History stand out from the many other dinosaur museums in the region, and make the institution an essential stop for anyone traveling the northeastern part of the Dinosaur Diamond.
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Oh no! Those silly 1950′s T-Rex reconstructions desecrating museum lawns. Or are they?
Perhaps someday in the distant future, man will have the technology to go back to the time of dinosaurs. If they do, and pick the North American Late Cretaceous, they may see well fed, very ‘bulky’ T-Rexes constantly ‘tripoding’ on their hind legs and tail, heads high in the air, to survey their hunting ground for any sign of movement (exactly like many low slung, quadrepedal monitor lizards often do). Likewise, there are some very emaciated, skin and bone crocodiles, and some enormously bulked out ones, much the equivalent of the well-fed looking ‘old’ T-Rex reconstructions. The time travelers might note that the only T-Rexes that look like the obligatory ‘skinny’ reconstrucstions of the late 20th,/early 21st century, are starving, sickly T-Rexes about to die.
How ironic that the ealier, bulky, upright reconstructions scoffed at today by the cutting edge dinosaur ‘experts’, may actually be the most accurate.
Those future scientists may laugh at how the paleontologists of the early 21st century scoffed and derided the ‘outdated’ reconstructions of their predecessors, who had the same bones to work wirth, but foolishly made their reconstructions bulky, 9like some living archosaurs), and in ridiculous upright stances (like birds, reptiles and mammals all do).
The Utah Field House of Natural History is one of several Utah State parks that was recommended for closure in a legislative audit, apparently because the facility costs more than it collects in admissions. Utah apparently subsidizes $8 for each visitor to the Utah Field House of Natural History. It’s sad that a business bottom-line perspective is so entrenched in this state that a valuable resource is at risk of closing or at least dramatic cutbacks to hours of operation and professional staffing.
thanks for the post. I will be visiting there this summer. I have been anxious to see the renovation because i visited the old one when i was a kid.
Also, to anyone interested, i got picked for the Dino Social Media Meetup at the Los Angeles Museum to preview the new dinosaur hall (on Thursday the 7th). I will do updates on my facebook page and I’ll try to get a blog post and videos up the next day.
Hope you were able to visit the Red Fleet trackway. Scientifically not as exciting, but gets the kids going almost as much as fiberglass brontosauropods at gas stations. Utah has an incredible collection of dinosaur resources and none should be closed. It is not a business criteria that closes parks (witness the witless proposal to close profitable liquor stores) but rather the lack of a constituency.
I’d ask those who have visited these facilities to come to their defense. You never know when a child’s imagination or future direction will be sparked by an exhibit or the chance to hear a dissenting theory like that of Dan Peterson’s above.
I was lucky enough to stumble into Utah Friends of Paleontology when my son was young. I continued to attend their meetings when he outgrew dinosaurs. There were many discussions of current thoughts, for and against. My son learned the basics of the scientific method in those days and grew into a formidable debater. I knew I was hooked as I sat rapt during a guest lecture on stromatolites….
Keep writing about all Utah has to offer, Brian. There are many benefits to this heritage beyond simple entertainment value.