Josie Bassett Morris Ranch

Wild and dangerous, romantic and adventurous, the American West is for most people today an almost mythological world, one separated from ours by time, technology, and civilization. Yet, for Josie Bassett Morris, the Wild West was a stark reality. Josie ...

Gates of Lodore

Gates of Lodore is located on the northern tip of Dinosaur National Monument. It is a long drive to the area and the wild, remote country adds to its sense of isolation. Here, the Green River, after winding across ...

Fremont People, Petroglyphs, and Pictographs at Swelter Shelter and Cub Creek

About 1,000 years ago, the Fremont people lived in this area and left evidence of their presence in the form of petroglyphs and pictographs. Several areas in the monument allow visitors to easily access these designs and ponder the mystery ...

Sound of Silence Trail

The Mesozoic Era lasted from about 250 million to 65 million years ago. It saw the evolution, terrestrial dominance, and eventual extinction of the dinosaurs.

For most of the Mesozoic, western North America was hot and dry, and the area around ...

Fossil Discovery Trail

Travel through millions of years of history on the Fossil Discovery Trail. Long ago, dynamic forces pushed and tilted these layers of rock upward. Later, erosion exposed the layers as colorful ridges. Erosion also revealed remnants of ancient ecosystems ...

Yampa River

The Yampa River extends for nearly 250 miles from its source in the mountains of Colorado to its confluence with the Green River. For the last 47 of those miles, the Yampa River is within Dinosaur National Monument. The river ...

Earl Douglass

Earl Douglass was born in 1862 in Medford, Minnesota. Although Douglass did not begin collecting fossils in earnest until in his early 30s, his interest in the sciences, especially geology, dated to his boyhood. As a young man, he ...

Stegosaurus ungulates at the Quarry Exhibit Hall

Stegosaurus is a plant eating dinosaur with plates on its back and spikes on its tail. Stegosaurus means “covered lizard,” a reference to its plates. They may have been used to protect its back from predators trying to grab a ...

Diplodocus longus at the Quarry Exhibit Hall

Diplodocus is one of the most abundant sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs) in the Morrison Formation. Its pencil-like teeth were only in the front of the jaws and were used to strip leaves off of low-growing plants. It could get up to ...

Camarasaurus lentus at the Quarry Exhibit Hall

Camarasaurus is one of the most common sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs) of the Jurassic. It grew up to 50 ft (15 m) long. Camarasaurus sounds huge by modern standards, but it is only a mid-sized sauropod. It had spoon-shaped teeth for ...