Digging Utah's Dinosaurs

Major new dinosaur sites are discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on a regular basis and the world has taken note. News articles have been frequent. Now, National Geographic magazine is spotlighting the area in a huge, 20-page feature, complete with impressive photos and graphics.

National Geographic titles the feature: Digging Utah's Dinosaurs. It will appear in the May 2014 issue.

Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune both have background articles on the magazine article.

Dinosaur discoveries in Utah's 'amazing place' get national attention

Utah’s rich fossil record featured in National Geographic

Here are a couple excerpts from the National Geographic article:

Around 75 million years ago, Utah was part of an island landmass called Laramidia. It was hot and swampy—and dinosaurs ruled...

...During the 20 million years or so that it existed, Laramidia seems to have been a runaway dinosaur factory, cranking out large and small dinosaurs in a surprising diversity of species. Figuring out how and why that happened, the researchers said, could tell us something fundamental about the interplay between ecology and evolution.

...That’s why he and his team return season after season to the Utah badlands, where every trek into the desert sheds new light on Laramidia’s story. “Every rock you crack open, you’re saying, Oh my God, I’ve never seen that before,” Miller said. “It’s brand-new. Unknown to science.”