The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has one of the great dinosaur specimens—Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. After two decades in the Great Hall, she was moved upstairs to a terrific new display, and the Great Hall was reorganized.
Pterosaur overlooking the Great Hall of the Field Museum
Sue the T. Rex
From the Field to in the field. Washington County in the southwest corner of Utah has incredible geologic diversity. We followed a trail on Bureau of Land Management area just outside St. George that promised finding some dinosaur tracks at the bottom of a wash.
Dino Cliffs Trail
Soon enough after a bit of a search we came limb to limb to what some Jurassic Era creatures left in the mud.
Grallator tracks
In 2000, St. George optometrist Sheldon Johnson was developing his land and looked at one of the blocks of sandstone overturned. He discovered what is still being explored as one of the best dinosaur tracks sites. In 2005, a museum was built over part of the site. We got a private tour by a retired Canadian geologist who might’ve had more fun showing us the exhibits as we did exploring. It started with an impressive Dilophosaurus footprint where you can see the claws and toe pads and cracks in the mud as if where made last week, not 200 million years ago.
The site was the shoreline of Lake Dixie. An artist has painted a mural across the site, and you can easily imagine the muddy shoreline where dinosaurs ran. The floor of the museum is filled with tracks and other impressions made by dinosaurs. One of the impressions in the area in the image below is a dino butt print with its feet planted just in front and hand prints on either side. Other areas show the marks left by the claws and tails of dinosaurs as they swam in the lake.
Dilophosaurus model on the fossilized mud of ancient Lake Dixie
The block below shows the tracks of one dino running the right, another the other way, and a third cutting across. The St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site helps you easily imagine life along a Jurassic lake.
Running track