ARCADIA, Duchesne County — There's a 45-million-year-old story to be told, and it's slowly emerging from beneath the ground in central Duchesne County.
The remains of fresh-water turtles, alligators and crocodiles already have been found through almost cursory inspection of scraps of shells and bones eroding out of the sediment in the sandy soil.
But the story goes deeper into the ground and is fully expected to include discoveries of prehistoric fish and mammals — ancestors to the modern-day horse, camel, deer, rhinoceros and even primates.
The pebble-sized, shiny scales of "garfish," millions of years old, are sufficiently scattered on the ground to attract immediate attention in the reflected sunlight.
"It's exciting because the fossils represent a pretty complete ecosystem that existed 45 million years ago in the Eocene Era. . . . There are also micro-fossils — really, really small rodents or primates," said Tyler Pinegar, the paleontologist hired to excavate and reconstruct the remains of bones and shells in the area known locally as "Granita Park."
Pinegar already has uncovered and assembled two complete fresh-water turtles, similar in size to those now found in the Amazon. He also has recovered and reconstructed an adult alligator that also is in very good shape. The alligator, whose skull measures about a foot long, was on display recently at two out-of-state trade shows frequented by paleontologists and others interested in the study of prehistoric forms of life.
"Really, from the time I first started digging in from where the (alligator) bones were sticking out to where I removed the skull was three or four hours," Pinegar said. "It wasn't a lengthy excavation, it was fairly shocking. We went back a week or so later and excavated and found three or more skulls."
This is the same area of Duchesne County that attracted paleontologists from the East in the 1920s and 1930s and could gain national notoriety again. After two years of preliminary work, the owners of 6,700 acres, previously owned by the late Grant Hansen, are ready to share new prehistoric discoveries with the world.
Dan Court and Rick Gatherum bought the property from Hansen two years ago, favoring its remote location for the operation of Turning Point, a residential treatment center for troubled teenage boys.
Long before Court arrived, Hansen and his neighbors were well aware there were turtle shells — scattered every few steps in some areas — that were slowly coming to the surface after being buried for millions of years. However, what no one may have been fully aware of over the years was the potential the property holds for scientific research.
Surprisingly, it took a lot of work by the new owners of Hansen's property to attract the attention of paleontologists. Court's wife, Pam, spent two years making telephone calls and taking some of her own discoveries to dinosaur museums. State paleontologist Jim Kirkland was interested and came to the property in September 2002 to take a look.
"They came down, looked at things, and he said, 'This is exciting, you actually have a possibility that you have two formations running through your land,' the Eocene and something similar to the Jurassic era," she said. "They said they think the dinosaur bones actually washed down from the Uintas and all of this was a lake and a river fed into it."
However, when Pam Court contacted Kirkland in the spring of 2003, he said a lack of state funding was going to prevent him from doing anything. He recommended she contact the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi.
The smorgasbord of buried treasure on private land where the property owners were begging for a professional inventory caught the attention of Pinegar, a Provo paleontologist and owner of Fossil Works. He contacted the Courts and went right to work.
Pinegar specializes "in the whole gamut" — fossil preparation along with prospecting, excavating and restoration, which consists of molding, casting and mounting.
"My goal in all this is to see original material go into the hands of academic paleontologists," he said.
The site is a paleontologist's dream — an open invitation to explore thousands of acres of privately owned badlands right on top of remains of a prehistoric community of aquatic animals and mammals.
"One of our goals is to do a survey of as much of the property as we can, and in the process we would GPS what we find on the maps. Just going out eight or nine times we have documented over 90 turtles — a lot of them are beyond repair, but that is over about seven to 10 acres," said Pinegar, who is eager to return to work once the spring rains ease and the mud dries up.
The Courts and Pinegar are excited to share their discoveries. They plan to promote paleontology by inviting school classes out for field trips and intend to urge universities and other institutions to benefit from the research. Plans are in the works to begin a series of day digs this summer to let the public come onto the property and actually assist in excavating the buried remains.
"My part will be to supply the paleontological experience so people who come out can dig with us and learn about the ecosystem, rocks, ancient environment and about the techniques for gathering data and correct field work," Pinegar said.
Pam Court plans to probe every corner of the property herself this summer and is adamant that any exploration be done properly.
"I want to know everything about that land. You study it, you learn from it and you leave it alone so it is there 500 years from now. But if I don't do something about it before I die, then nobody will. If you don't have somebody researching it or writing about it, then nobody will know it was there," she said.
"None of us are in there to do the wrong thing, everybody has the same goal — to uncover and research. The point of it is we are not going to get rich, we don't want the place destroyed. We want it done in the right way. There are stories to be told."
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