“Valley of the Dinosaurs” is where thousands of dinosaurs’ fossils and bones are piled up in one place.
At the border between the states of Utah and Colorado, the Green and Yampa rivers meet. Due to the pressure of water over thousands of years, this land has been eroded and a large canyon has been created. Also, you can see many mountains formed by the movement of tectonic plates over millions of years in this land. But the specialty of this place is the discovery of dinosaur fossils and bone piles. How did that happen?
According to scientists, 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, there was a severe drought that lasted for years in this area. Many dinosaurs came to the rivers in search of water and inhabited this land. Due to the heavy rains in the mountains after the drought, the rivers overflowed, and suddenly a violent stream flowed down. The dinosaurs caught in this flood swept away in the water and deposited their bodies in this land. Due to the accumulation of mud in a short period, their bodies are covered with mud. Due to the pressure from above, this layer of mud has gradually turned into a powder rock. In a way, this is a graveyard of dinosaurs that suffered a natural disaster.
Over time, due to the impact of the tectonic plate movement, mountains have been created in that area. Due to this, the land under the earth has been uplifted and then turned to one side. By doing so, the layer of crushed rock in which the bodies of the dinosaurs were trapped was exposed to the environment, and due to the rains that fell for thousands of years, this crushed rock slowly melted and the fossils of the dinosaurs were exposed on the surface.
People have lived in this area 2000 years ago. The drawings they drew on the stones can be seen even today. This area has recently attracted people’s attention because of the discovery of dinosaur bones around 1910. By 1915, it was named a national monument of America, and the people of that time worked to protect the land. In 1950, the government stopped an attempt to generate hydroelectric power by constructing a dam and a reservoir along those rivers.
Today, this area is named “Dinosaur Valley National Monument”. You can see only 800 excavation sites for fossils in that area. The complete skeletons of dinosaurs found by these excavations have been exhibited in popular museums worldwide. It is said that some of these bone parts are found together as complete skeletons, while other bone parts are found separately and mixed. Also, you can see the efforts made by animals such as urchins to eat bone fragments exposed to the environment.
Visitors to this monument will have the opportunity to ride the buses in the park to visit the excavation sites, see the fossils and skeletons of dinosaurs on display, learn more about it from the park officials, and touch the fossils exposed to the public.
The most popular part of the Dinosaur Valley National Monument is the “Skeleton Wall”. This is a stone wall containing the fossils and skeletons of 1500 dinosaurs, which fell off the mountain, fell to the side, and were washed away by the rain. An attractive building has been built.
See the bone wall and the area in these pictures.
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