Monday, July 7, 2008
Great trip so far - everyone in our group is very friendly and getting along well.
This morning we met John Foster, the lead paleontologist at the Museum of Western Colorado. He gave an interesting slide presentation/talk (at the Dinosaur Journey Museum, a 3 minute walk from the hotel!) on the basic geology of the area and the major players in the animal fossil record.
We then hopped in their 15-passenger van for a trip along the 23-mile Rim Rock Drive which winds, and I mean WINDS, through the amazing geologic formations of the Colorado National Monument State Park. We stopped at a number of overlooks with breathtaking views across vast expanses of open space with vertical drops of hundreds of feet - this is definitely NOT coastal Mid-Atlantic geology!
At one stop he showed us turtle footprint "casts" under a sandstone overhang, 150 million years old, one of only two sets known in the entire formation.
After our descent from Rim Rock Drive we drove into Grand Junction and visited the Museum of Western Colorado where we saw interesting displays on ancient native cultures, the Spanish influence, and the history of the area in the 19th and 20th centuries. The staff also gave us a tour of their "large materials" collections area.
From there, we returned to Fruita to visit the exhibits at the Dinosaur Journey Museum - they have a few of our old dino exhibit friends, including the lovely one tearing the head of another animal. (Dinosaurs - wherever you go, there they are.)
Tomorrow, we dig for dinos.
Dan Summers, education curator at the Virginia Living Museum
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