Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry

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Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center

The Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry National Natural Landmark (designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966) is located on a gravel road about 30 miles south of Price, Utah, USA. The area contains the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur fossils ever found: well over 15,000 bones have been excavated from this Jurassic 'predator trap' and there are many thousands more awaiting excavation and study.

The visitor center is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Price Field Office, (435) 636-3600. There is a skeleton reconstruction of a young Allosaurus (and other bones) on display in the visitor center, along with many other exhibits.

Picnic tables, water in open season, restrooms and several hiking and nature trails available. Open daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Open week-ends only from March through Memorial Day. Hours are 10 am to 5 pm except Sunday, when the quarry is open 12 noon to 5 pm.

A renovated and expanded quarry visitor center was dedicated on April 28, 2007.

[edit] History

The quarry was found by sheepmen and cowmen as they drove their animals through the area. Lee and Grant Stokes located the find and took some bones to the University of Utah. In 1927, the Department of Geology at the University of Utah, under the direction of Chairman F.F. Hintze, visited the area and collected 800 bones. In 1939, a field party from Princeton University led by William Lee Stokes began work. In three summers, they collected 1,200 bones. The quarry was not worked again until 1960. In 1974, a new dinosaur was discovered by James H. Madsen, Jr., Assistant Research Professor of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, making him the first person to discover a new dinosaur out of the Morrison Formation in 75 years. He named it Stokesosaurs clevelandi. In 1979, another new dinosaur was found in the quarry by Madsen. He named it Marshosaurs bicentesimus. In 1987, Brigham Young University paleontologists excavated a fossil dinosaur egg, at the time the oldest such egg ever found.

Over the years, excavations led by the University of Utah and the Utah Museum of Natural History have resulted in the collection of more than 12,000 fossil bones from the quarry. While most of the original fossils are currently housed at the Utah Museum of Natural History, many skeletons reproduced from Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur remains are now on exhibit in more than 65 museums worldwide. Original specimens from the quarry remain on public exhibit in Utah at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price and the Earth Science Museum at Brigham Young University in Provo.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) opened a visitor center at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in 1968. This was the first-ever BLM visitor center. On April 28, 2007 a new, larger facility was dedicated that has updated exhibits. The new visitor center generates its own electricity from rooftop solar panels.