Source URL: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/travel/destinations/usa/article4468472.ece

USA

Searching for monsters on Utah’s dinosaur road

A 500-mile route round the canyons and desert of eastern Utah brings the prehistoric

age to life, says Aaron Millar

Aaron Millar 13 Jun 2015 00:01:00

There are monsters in the wall of bones. In this dried-out sandstone desert of northeastern Utah they rise to the surface of the earth like blood-flushing skin. I trail my hand against the embossed remains of enormous teeth, articulated tailbones and talons that could have crushed a skull like a grape. These skeletons are not the stuff of nightmares, however; these old bones once walked the Earth.

Here, at the Carnegie Quarry in the Dinosaur National Monument — a rock slab the size of a football pitch, 150 miles east of Salt Lake City — there are more than 1,500 prehistoric remains embedded in an exposed cliff face. It is one of the largest such finds in the world, and the only one on display in situ for the public. I can’t quite believe it’s real: leg bones as thick as tree trunks, ribs like long swords, a hollowed eye socket that dwarfs my fist. “Don’t worry,” a nearby ranger says, as if reading my thoughts. “He’s too big for your closet and he definitely won’t fit under your bed.”

The monument — a 200,000-acre reserve filled with fossils scattered like seashells on the shore — is the centrepiece of the Dinosaur Diamond Scenic Byway: a 512-mile road trip around eastern Utah that takes in the most complete record of prehistoric life on the planet.

I’d come here because of Jurassic World, the new blockbuster follow-up to the classic Nineties film, Jurassic Park. Having fallen in love with dinosaurs while watching the original movie as a kid, I now wanted to share that passion with my own family — Cameron, five, Elise, two, and Gillian, my wife. They didn’t take much persuading: kids love monsters, especially ones that can’t eat you. We packed our lives into an RV, the on-steroids version of a camper van, and prepared to travel back in time.

We didn’t have to go far. One of the reasons that Dinosaur National Monument is so rich in fossil history is the topography: layers of sedimentary rock — which is normally buried in horizontal sheets, hundreds of feet underground — have inverted vertically, like a stack of pancakes resting on its side, revealing segments of time as distinct as layer cake. Beside a mound of Navajo sandstone we found fossilised squid and the bones of a dolphin, evidence that this desert furnace was once an ocean. A few hundreds yards down the track, and 25 million years later, the water had receded and the land had bloomed into lush savanna: we discovered ferns embedded in stone and learnt how to identify the burgundy tint of bones left by giant beasts. It felt as though we were peering into the sinews of the Earth: the high desert climate here is perfect for preserving, and then exposing, this mass grave of prehistoric life.

There was more near by. The next day we drove an hour west to Red Fleet State Park where, 200 million years previously,

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dinosaurs came to drink and left more than 300 footprints embedded in the dunes. The kids loved the thrill of discovery, measuring their hands and feet against every print, but we were dumbfounded by the passage of time itself. Each footprint seemed to hold the resonance of that deep longevity — as if by touching it, our fingers could grasp a concept that our minds would never understand.

Over the next few days, heading south on the dinosaur byway, we passed through the heartlands of the state: small picket-fence towns with flags on every porch, scattered farms filled with the dilapidated remains of harvest machinery, a ten-year-old girl herding cattle beside the road. This is the belt buckle of rural Utah, mostly overlooked by tourists shuttling between the star glare of the state’s national parks, but we had to work hard to see it.

A half-hour drive to a dig site near Price turned into a four-hour bone-rattling off-road ordeal. At Nine Mile Canyon — one of central Utah’s most scenic spots, but a misnomer for the winding 70-mile only partially paved track — we narrowly escaped a flash flood, fording the overflowing river as it surged upwards at our spinning wheels. Bear Grylls would have family holidays just like this, I consoled my wife (a fan).

Then a highlight: in the company of guide Randy Jensen, we set off into the San Rafael Swell — a jagged wilderness of slot canyons, desert streams and scorched tufts of indian ricegrass. He showed us black gizzard stones that once churned food in the belly of a dinosaur and were still smooth to the touch, eerie slabs of dark blue petrified bark and a Tyrannosaurus rex footprint that fulfilled all the fantasies of my inner ten-year-old.

Near by we found pictographs and petroglyphs — ethereal red figures, dyed in the rock more than 2,000 years ago. We collected chipped arrowheads left over from the Fremont people and discovered a former hideout of the outlaw Butch Cassidy.

What was remarkable, though, was that all of this history was just lying around. There were no signs, fences or overpriced gift shops. This was Indiana Jones-style archaeology, and the closer we looked the more treasures we found. Holes in the cliff became ancient Native American grain stores; rock graffiti, messages left by bandit riders; a bed of old stones, a fossil trove.

Further down the road there were fantastic museums too — a surprising hit with the kids who loved their interactive, child-friendly design. Our favourites were the Utah Field House, with its life-sized dinosaur park and working palaeontology lab, and the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, one of the richest sites in the world where more than 12,000 dinosaur bones have been discovered over the past 100 years.

Kevin Thirouin, a student researcher at the quarry, described palaeontology to us as “detective work”: a kind of Jurassic CSI, in which the forensic mysteries of long dead life are slowly being unravelled. It seemed creative too: a pick-in-the-dirt job of chipping away at a sculpture hidden in jumbled fragments deep in the earth.

“So will we ever be able to create a real-life Jurassic World?” I couldn’t help asking. “Possibly,” he said, sensing Cameron and me willing him into the affirmative. “But not in our lifetime.”

Maybe that’s a good thing. At the end of the trip, near the small desert town of Moab, we found ourselves in a landscape as grand and fierce as the monsters it once contained. At Dead Horse Point State Park, named after the mustangers who would corral wild equines against the cliff, we imagined the echo of giant camarasaurus feet ricocheting around the red pinnacles of the valley floor. In Canyonlands National Park we picnicked with the ghosts of pterodactyls swooping through the sunset — the Green River swirling slowly through the burgundy barren, as thunderstorms rained rainbows above the distant mesas.

And then a perfect family moment: hiking with the sunrise through Arches National Park, pink light shining through the rock windows like the iris of an allosaurus. Monsters they may be, but phantoms is perhaps a better word: echoes of a lost time, reminders of our own fleeting passage and the impermanence of the ground beneath our feet. Dinosaurs make kids of us all.

Need to know

Aaron Millar travelled as a guest of the Utah Office of Tourism

For more information see visitutah.com

America As You Like It (020 8742 8299, americaasyoulikeit.com) has an 11-night “Utah by RV” holiday from £1,090pp including return flights from London Heathrow to Salt Lake City, one night in Salt Lake City at the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel and 10 days’ RV rental including all insurance, unlimited mileage, resort pass and GPS navigation system. The price is based on a family of four travelling together.

Britain’s best trips for dinosaurs

Dinosaur Isle, Isle of Wight

Hanover Point, on the Isle of Wight’s southwest coast, is the best place in the UK for seeing dinosaur footprints, including a set of enormous iguanodon tracks visible at low tide. Near by there are fossil-hunting hotspots at Compton Bay and Yaverland, as well as the impressive Dinosaur Isle museum in Sandown, which features rare fossils and animatronic dinosaurs. Don’t miss the augmented reality Dinosaur Island app and trail too, which allows visitors to photograph themselves with virtual dinosaurs at key sites of interest. Tom’s Eco Lodge (01983 897089, tomsecolodge.com) has family-friendly boutique glamping from £120 per night for four people.

Jurassic Coast, Dorset

Covering 95 miles from Orcombe Point, Devon, to Old Harry Rocks near Swanage, Dorset, the Unesco World Heritage Jurassic Coast is Britain’s most fertile fossil-hunting terrain. For the best chance of bringing home your own piece of prehistory, join a guided tour. The Lyme Regis Museum (01297 443370, lymeregismuseum.co.uk) has regular fossil walks from £11 per adult, £6 per child. Stay at The Pig on the Beach (01929 450288, thepighotel.com), a delightful shabby-chic B&B, with views across the Jurassic beaches of Studland Bay. Doubles are from £145 a night.

The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

The fossilised bones of a newly discovered, as yet unnamed, dinosaur went on display at the National Museum of Wales last week. The 2m-long dinosaur is estimated to be 200 million years old, and it was discovered by fossil-hunting brothers, Nick and Rob Hanigan, on Lavernock beach in south Wales. It is believed to be the earliest Jurassic dinosaur ever found. The fossil will be on display until September 6; admission is free (museumwales.ac.uk)

Isle of Skye, Inner Hebrides

At the beach at An Corran, in the heart of Scotland’s Jurassic Isle, there are some of the oldest and largest footprints ever discovered in the country. You’ll have to look hard to find them — their exact whereabouts are kept secret to aid their preservation. Call at the Staffin Ecomuseum (01470 562321, skyecomuseum.co.uk) for clues and a range of prehistoric curiosities, including the world’s smallest dinosaur footprint.

Garalapin House (01478 611333, garalapinhouse.co.uk) is a small, family-run B&B near by and charges from £27.50 per adult and £20 per child per night.

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Publisher: News UK & Ireland Ltd

Published Date: 13 Jun 2015 00:01:00

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