"Even though the sun is hot, the wind is blowing sand in one ear and out the other, the gnats are swarming around getting in my hair and in my ears - still, finding an unknown dinosaur bone is exciting."
"Dinosaur Jim" Jensen was talking about what it's like to discover a new species of dinosaur. He should know. He found far more than his share , before he retired from Brigham Young University 10 years ago.Jensen is a member of the ancient lineage of dinosaur bone-hunters - a breed as unusual as a plate-backed stegosaurus, as active and alert as the bird-mimicking predators. And at times, some of them have been about as contentious as a pack of ill-tempered tyrannosaurs.
Jensen uncovered many of his most spectacular finds in Colorado, such as a couple of the world's largest known dinosaurs, behemoths called supersaurus and ultrasaurus. Some of these animals may have stretched more than 130 feet long. But Jensen also collected dinosaur bones from 18 sites in Utah.
During a telephone interview from his home in Provo, Jensen said that when he poked his trowel into clay and it hit a petrified bone, the sound was different from hitting a rock.
"So that's an exciting moment," he said. "As I scrape away the dirt, I see a patch of black bone, and wonder what it is and whose it is. And as I go on from there and uncover more and more of the specimen, the mystery increases."
Jensen belongs to a long tradition of dinosaur-hunting in Utah, going back to the late 19th century.
The first scientist to find a dinosaur fossil in Utah was Dr. John S. Newberry, who discovered parts of a dinosaur skeleton in 1859 in East Wash Canyon in southeastern Utah. Newberry participated in an exploring expedition led by Capt. John N. Macomb. A trail of bone fragments led Newberry up a dangerous cliff, and he collected some larger pieces but left much of the fossil embedded in the rock.
In the 1980s, acting on the request of professional paleontologists, a Moab author and expert desert trekker named Fran Barnes relocated the site of Newberry's original discovery. In September 1989, the Utah Division of State History excavated some of the bones remaining, leaving others in place.
The fossil turned out to be that of one of the oldest sauropod
NEWS EXTRA
dinosaurs ever discovered. But at the time of the Macomb expedition, little attention was paid to the bones.
It wasn't until 1877 that Western dinosaurs became a hot news item, in a "dinosaur rush" that amounted to a scientific gold rush. A wave of dinomania was washing across the world, with great museums racing to gather and display impressive skeletons.
Two of the fossil-hunters - Othniel C. Marsh of Yale College and Edward D. Cope of the U.S. Geological Survey - competed fiercely in a dash to find bigger and better fossils in the West. Stories have come down of shootings, as groups under the direction of these bitter enemies went after fossils of all kinds.
According to one legend, one of the groups had dug out a set of fossils, carefully jacketed them in protective material, boxed them and hauled them to a railroad.
But, relates Wade E. Miller, director of the Earth Science Museum at Brigham Young Uni-ver-sity, at the rail line, members of the opposing group "put their labels on, and they were shipped to the other place."
Most of the "bone war" took place elsewhere in the West, particularly in Wyoming, but it extended into Utah. Marsh is credited with exploring the Uintah Basin at that time. However, the fossils he collected in Utah were mostly non-dinosaurs.
Starting in the 1890s, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh sent expeditions to the West for its own dinosaur fossils. In 1909, the museum's Earl Douglass discovered dinosaur remains near the small town of Jensen, Uintah County. The quarry turned out to be of worldwide importance. In 1915 it was designated Dinosaur National Monument.
By 1924, an astounding 350 tons of fossils were removed from the quarry, and exploration continues today in the monument.
Frederick Pack, chairman of the University of Utah's geology department, became concerned around the 1920s that too many dinosaurs were trekking east from Utah. He recruited Golden York of the department to look for fossils in the state, besides those in the famous quarries operated by the big museums.
Miller said York asked around and "did come up with some dinosaur bones near the town of Cleveland, Utah, a little farming community." York and Pack collected a few bones in the vicinity in 1929-31, said Miller, who has read some of Pack's notes.
But then the field studies petered out. "It was Depression times. It was hard to get money," Miller said.
Wm. Lee Stokes comes into the picture at this point. Stokes was born 78 years ago in Hiawatha, Carbon County, but when he was 1 year old, his family moved to Cleveland, Emery County, on the edge of the San Rafael Swell.
"I think I was born with a natural curiosity about fossils, and our little ranch was within a few miles of the outcropping of the Morrison formation, which is the great dinosaur repository in the western United States," he said.
The formation stretches from Canada to mid-Arizona, taking in half of Utah, all of Colorado, most of Wyoming, part of Montana and sections of other states.
"My father ran his cattle out there on the range, where the dinosaurs cropped out. And news about the bones that the cowboys and sheepherders found, naturally, was common knowledge down in that country," Stokes said.
He was interested as a young fellow in what he called "d'-NI-zors." His father would send him to check on cattle; he usually didn't locate as many as his father would have liked, but he often found dinosaur bones. "He took a pretty dim view of this dinosaur thing, but it couldn't kill my interest," Stokes said.
Stokes recalls visiting one area near his home when he was a youth. "There were literally thousands of pieces [of dinosaur boneT cropping out on the side of the hill. Most of them had weathered into fragments, you understand.
"But there were big pieces and little pieces, and thumb and toe bones, and teeth and so forth."
When he attended BYU, he wrote a master's thesis about the Morrison formation.
Stokes went on to Princeton, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the formation. He is credited as the first scientist to realize the importance of the formation as a repository of dinosaur remains.
At Princeton, Stokes noticed that the university had no dinosaur specimen. "I knew about this place where the bones were all over the ground," he said.
With the $1,000 backing of a Princeton alumnus - a lawyer named Malcolm Lloyd - Stokes returned to Emery County to unearth a dinosaur for the school. For two summers - 1940 and 1941 - he and his assistants dug in what is now the famous Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.
"We took out enough bones that a single skeleton could be put together. And I earned my way through Princeton by cleaning these bones, to a large extent."
After working for the federal government for seven years starting during World War II, Stokes was hired by the University of Utah. He became a professor and chairman of the geology department.
"It wasn't many years before I got to thinking about dinosaurs again," said Stokes.
Because the university was short of cash needed for field expeditions, he thought up the "dinosaur cooperative project." The U. would collect bones for other institutions; the other institutions provided about $2,500 each.
Many other universities wanted dinosaurs, and so Stokes and colleagues - particularly his student, James H. Madsen - "really opened this up in a big way."
They collected about 10,000 bones from Cleveland-Lloyd."You just can't find a perfect, complete skeleton. So Madsen became an expert at reproducing missing pieces and eventually making complete plaster skeletons," Stokes said.
At Cleveland-Lloyd, Stokes directed exploration in the early to middle 1960s. These specimens became the nucleus of the fine displays at the University of Utah, as well as exhibits at other institutions.
"The last I'd heard, we had supplied 42 exhibition specimens throughout the world. We have allosaurus, camptosaurus, stegosaurus and camarasaurus. As a matter of fact, the best exhibition of Cleveland-Lloyd stuff is down in Price, in the Prehistoric Museum connected with the College of Eastern Utah."
Eventually, the quarry was taken over by the Bureau of Land Management, which operates a visitor center there now. "It continued to supply specimens and still does," Stokes said.
Jim Jensen's formal education had ended with high school. But in years of working as a preparator at Harvard, he went on many dinosaur expeditions and acquired an enormous fund of scientific expertise.
He was invited to BYU to mount one of the dinosaurs that the cooperative project had found for the Provo school, and he decided to stay. He became curator of the Earth Science Museum. Jensen soon began rounding up dinosaurs for BYU, launching expeditions throughout the region.
"We have one of the better Jurassic dinosaur collections in the world," said Wade Miller of the BYU museum.
Jensen made many spectacular discoveries before he retired 10 years ago. He found the world's hugest known dinos at Colorado's Dry Mesa.
The BYU bones make up "one of the most important dinosaur collections in the world. It's important because it has so many unknown dinosaurs in it," Jensen said.
Over years of vigorous collecting, BYU gathered a minimum of 125 tons of dinosaur bones. Unfortunately, because preparing the specimens is so laborious and expensive, and because BYU's collection is so large, many tons are in storage awaiting later study.
"They're stored under the [footballT stadium, under the east stands," Miller said. "We've got a walled-off area that's secure there."
BYU's museum display area is so small that "we display maybe 5 percent of our materials."
Much of the rest remains in plaster blocks beneath the stands of Cougar Stadium.
When fossil bones are uncovered on the site, they are fragile. Often they have broken off into scattered fragments. Scientists "jacket" the finds in blocks of plaster to prevent further breakage. They impregnate burlap with plaster and cover the bones and associated rocks.
Back in the lab, the numbered jackets are cut away, and the bones are extracted from the matrix. Researchers must "remove the rock from bone, essentially grain by grain," said Frank DeCourten, paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History, on the U. campus.
"That process can take years, just to clean and prepare a single bone. And there are between 300 and 400 bones in the skeleton of a dinosaur," assuming it's complete.
"It's not nearly as adventurous and glamorous as many people think it is.
"The general rule of thumb is that for every week you spend in the field you have to spend at least three months in the laboratory for cleaning and preparation of the fossil materials, and then for its analysis."
Only after the bones are extracted can scientists describe the dinosaur, determine whether it's a new species and publish their results. "All that takes time," DeCourten said.
But far too often, the bones remain in the plaster cases for years or decades.
Dinosaur bones collected at Cleveland-Lloyd remain jacketed in the Utah Museum of Natural History preparation rooms, where scientists are gradually removing the surrounding rock. Some are in the packing crates where they were placed at the quarry - wrapped in 1964 newspapers.
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(Chart)
Craig Holyoak, Deseret News
How fossils are made
After the dinosaur dies (1) the soft tissue decays, leaving the bony skeleton (2). The bones must be rapidly buried by sediment. This normally occurs in rivers, lakes or the sea, into which the carcasses of land animals are washed. Left undisturbed, the organic material in the bones decays and is replaced by minerals seeping through the sediment (3).
If the bony structuree is completely replaced by minerals, the process is called petrification. Another possibility if for the bones to dissolve, leaving a hollow mold that is later filed by minerals, creating a solid mold of the bones. This creates a natureal cast.
The fossilizing bones may be covered by more sediment, encasing the bones or mold in hardening stone.
Movement of the sedimentary layers can cause the skeleton to break apart, crumble or become separted in the strata. Further land movement and erosion may later expose the fossil to the surface (4).
(Chart)
Utah's dinosaurs and fossils
Where to see them
1. George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park, Ogden, Life-size (and some smaller) replicas of dinosaurs outside. Indoor displays also. Admission fee.
2. Utah Museum of Natural History
University of Utah campus. Mounted skeletons and other displays. Small admission fee.
3. Hogle Zoo
"Dinosaurs Alive" animated exhibit. Admission fee.
4. Earth Science Museum
Brigham Young University. Mounted skeletons, mural, displays. Admission fee.
5. Red Fleet Reservoir
Dinosaur footprints are exposed in the rocks on the shore. Ask rangers at the state park where to find them.
6. Utah Field House of Natural History, Vernal
Life-size replicas of 14 prehistoric animals with indoor displays and dinosaur bones. Admission charged.
7. Dinosaur National Monument
One of the finest dinosaur exhibits in the world. Spectacular quarry near Jensen shows bones in place. Other exhibits. Admission charged.
8. Prehistoric Museum
College of Eastern Utah, Price. Mounted skeletons, footprints, displays. Admission free.
9. Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry
15 miles from U-10. The visitors center has a mounted allosaurus skeleton
9. Esclante State Park
West of Escalante on U-12. Deposits of dinosaur becones and petrified wood.