Natural History Museum

Calvin Woodruff

History 1700

4/12/2018
 For the final project me and a few friends traveled down to the Dinosaur National Park

in Vernal Utah.1 We explored the museum and all it had to offer. We additionally went to the

national park a little further down the road and visited the wall of bones holding 2 dinosaurs

within it.2

I'm going to talk about the many things at the two places that have historical importance

of many of the sites and exhibits. The sites have things for native americans, geography

information, and dinosaurs.3

At the museum we saw things like multiple native artifacts like arrow tips and articles of

clothing. These bags are made present-day by ute Indians. They can hold things such as seeds to

help with planting. Scarves can help keep warm in winter time when it wasn't warm.4

1
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

2
Services, National Park. 1915. Exhibit, Carnegie Quarry (Wall of Bones), 4545 Hwy 40

Dinosaur, CO 81610. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

3
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

4
Ibid
 A important part of surviving as a group of people is keeping kids alive and well so that

they can grow to do what you do and continue living to form another generation. The natives

came up with things that can be used to help them with these. Moccasins were very important for

keeping your body temperature up at a safe level to prevent hyperthermia. The baby board helps

carry the baby and keep it safe when your not around. It also helps keep it warm.5

The museum had many different fossils. Inside they had a room dedicated to cleaning the

fossils when they arrive at the museum. When they discover a new site that has bones they go

threw a long process of gathering the stone and bone around the ground to make sure they grab

everything. They will take every piece they can gather and send them to the museum at which

they will attempt to clean the stone off the bone and prepare it to be put on display like many of

the exhibits around the museum. After they finish cleaning they attempt to find the dinosaur they

use to belong to the following piece was said to be hard to figure out because it didn't seem to fit

into any other group they had believed to have seen before. After some time they found it to be a

5
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

 Stegosaurus’s upper left leg. They had trouble figuring it out because it was larger than

any other one they have ever seen before. The preparation time for this piece was 283 hours.

That's not including the 120 hours it took to recover every piece from the field they dug it up

from.6

The wall of bones use to be where a river flowed. This river was used by dinosaurs for

water. The dinosaurs got swept in the water and pulled down stream and drowned. The river

slowed here and the bodys settled at the river bottom. Were covered by mud and sand that then

kept the bones in great condition and the result was near perfect bones that were stored for

millions of years.7

6
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

7
Services, National Park. 1915. Exhibit, Carnegie Quarry (Wall of Bones), 4545 Hwy 40

Dinosaur, CO 81610. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

 The Earth has been changing everything for so long that when we started digging down

into the ground we found that the dirt was different the further we went down. The Dirt was

layered differently then the dirt before. We found out that each layer was from a different time

period. With some carbon dating we can determine that the age of the layer. Each layer had some

different dinosaurs in them and that helped us determine the length One of the lowest layers we

call the precambrian era that starts 545 million years ago and ends 4.5 billion years ago. There

are 10 eras mentioned here containing the Cretaceous period 65 to 70 million years ago that had

the Triranisorus rex.8

8
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

 In the Precambrian era there was a small creature that was called a Trilobite. They can be

found near water and on every continent. They are found near water which tells us that here,

there was a large and shallow sea here in utah hundreds of millions of years ago. On the right is

a picture of the surrounding area in an 80 miles radius. The colors indicate what era the rock on

top is from. The brown is the Precambrian rock as talked about before. The blue is from the

Paleozoic era and is from a time when this land was covered by water and teeming with life

around 251 to 545 million years ago. The green is from the Mesozoic era and this is where most

of the fossils we see here came from. This region had water come and go with many dinosaurs

returning to this area at this time 65 to 251 million years ago. Lastly, the yellow section which

represents the Cenozoic era rock which has been forming over the last 65 million years9

The Allosaurus was a smaller sized T-rex and they often hunted in packs. They

surrounded there prey and ate together. They lived around 90-160 million years ago and they

were mostly found around Utah and in Wyoming. Like the T-rex, there diet consisted of meat

they captured with its family. The Stegosaurus on the other hand eat entirely plants. Stegosaurus

9
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

and Allosaurus both lived around the same time. They both played a big part in the evolution of

both of these creature. The predator and the prey. 10

This trip was a fun adventure and I am glad me and my friends had the opportunity to go.

We all had fun learning and seeing the many things that the museum had to offer. Everything

from the process of recovering the bone to the cleaning and restoration of it.11 Then to put it up

on display for millions of people today to see. It was lots of fun to see the national park and to

see the wall of bones the national park around it.12

Bibliography

10
DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

11
Ibid
12
Services, National Park. 1915. Exhibit, Carnegie Quarry (Wall of Bones), 4545 Hwy 40

Dinosaur, CO 81610. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

DNR. Exhibit, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, 496 E. Main Vernal,

UT 84078. Accessed March 31st, 2018.

Services, National Park. 1915. Exhibit, Carnegie Quarry (Wall of Bones), 4545 Hwy 40

Dinosaur, CO 81610. Accessed March 31st, 2018.