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Click on the small pictures to see them at a larger size.
I: Welcome!
Want to see some dinosaur fossils? Few people living in Hawaii get a chance to dig in a dinosaur quarry. This web site lets you travel to a dinosaur quarry the fast way--through the Internet. So, here's your chance to enjoy a dinosaur field trip to Utah!
The trip.
You are there! You just slept through the 11-hour trip from Honolulu (which included a 2-hour layover in L.A., and a 2-hour flight from L.A. to Salt Lake City). (Weren't those tiny airline seats uncomfortable during such a long trip?) Do you recognize where you are? (If not, we have a map.)
That's the Great Salt Lake! It's named that because of the enormous amount of salt dissolved in the water. There is more salt in the Great Salt Lake than in the Pacific Ocean we swim in. This in-land lake is so salty you float! Geologist Barbara Keating, a scientist from the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Plantology, traveled to Utah and Arizona last year to work with colleagues. While there, she joined the Friends of Paleontology at the Prehistoric Museum in Price Utah for a field trip to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.
From the Salt Lake City airport you must rent a car and drive south to visit the dinosaur quarry. Along the way, you pass through the ghost town of Thistle, Utah. In 1983, rock and debris fell from the walls of Soldier Creek Canyon. The landslide blocked the canyon, forming a natural earthen dam. Rainwater from heavy rains collected behind the dam and drown the small town of Thistle.
The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers tunneled through the slide and drained away the water. Both the highway and the train tracks were rerouted, but the town was deserted. Only a ghost town remains (right). Dinosaur bones are found in the Cretaceous age rocks around Thistle.
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