Carnegie Quarry

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Carnegie Quarry, also known as Dinosaur Quarry or Douglass Quarry, [1] is a fossil site in Utah that dates to the Jurassic Period. It is located in the Morrison Formation. It is part of Dinosaur National Monument, which was founded to protect the site. A portion of the quarry remains unexcavated, and the fossils remain in the ground where they can be viewed by the public at the Quarry Visitor Center.

Contents

Carnegie Quarry is considered "one of the most important localities" in the Morrison Formation. [2] Hundreds of specimens have been collected from the site, representing at least ten different dinosaur species and several other kinds of reptile.

History

Earl Douglass standing alongside the vertebrae that led to the discovery of the site Earl Douglass discovery.jpg
Earl Douglass standing alongside the vertebrae that led to the discovery of the site

In 1909, the Carnegie Museum sent Earl Douglass to search for fossils. After months of unsuccessful searching, on Tuesday, August 17, near Vernal, Utah, Douglass came across a series of tail vertebrae that he identified as Brontosaurus . The discovery immediately attracted local attention. Douglass soon began excavations, and the series of caudal vertebrae proved to belong to a nearly complete skeleton of Apatosaurus. It became apparent that this was one of many specimens in the quarry. [3]

On October 4, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation establishing Dinosaur National Monument. This took Douglass by surprise, and he was uncertain of how it would affect excavation. Holland was critical of the decision, saying "there are ten thousand other places in the mountains of the West where there are fossils sticking out of the rock...which are just as well worthy of being consecrated as 'national monuments' as is this spot." Holland was subsequently assured by the secretary of the interior that designating the land a national monument was the only way to protect it from private interests. The Carnegie Museum was granted permission to continue excavations at the site. [3] By 1917, the fragmentary condition of many of the fossils being excavated led Holland to become discouraged about the prospect of finding much more material, and Holland considered making 1918 the last year of excavations, but ultimately continued renewing the permit for a few more years. [3] After Andrew Carnegie's death in 1919, funding for the excavation decreased and the Carnegie Museum ceased excavations in 1922. [4] In 1923, the Smithsonian Institution and University of Utah conducted excavations at the site. The collection of fossils from the site then ceased for several decades until the National Park Service resumed excavations in the 1950s. [4]

Quarry map DNM Quarry map.jpg
Quarry map

In 1957, construction of the quarry visitor center began, which was opened in 1958. Approximately 2,000 bones are displayed in the building, left in the rock where they were found. [4] Work on the quarry wall was completed in 1999. [3]

Geology

Carnegie Quarry is located in the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation. The site has been dated to between 150.91 and 150.04 million years ago. [5] The quarry is located in a sandstone bed known as the Quarry Sandstone. The Quarry Sandstone is unusual for the upper Morrison Formation in being relatively coarse-grained. [6] The depositional environment has been subject to various interpretations. Kenneth Carpenter considered it to have been deposited in a braided river that he called the Quarry River, which he compared to the modern-day Platte River. [7] In contrast, Brezinski and Kollar interpreted the Quarry Sandstone to represent a crevasse splay, with the accumulation of skeletons at Carnegie Quarry having been deposited within one of the distributary channels over the course of at least two flooding events. [6] The quarry bed is tilted 67° from horizontal. [3]

Fossils

CM 11338, a nearly complete Camarasaurus skeleton Camarasaurus lentus Carnegie.jpg
CM 11338, a nearly complete Camarasaurus skeleton
A portion of the quarry that remains in place Dinosaur National Monument vertebrae.jpg
A portion of the quarry that remains in place
CM 3018, the Apatosaurus specimen that was the first specimen from the quarry to be found, on display at the Carnegie Museum Louisae.jpg
CM 3018, the Apatosaurus specimen that was the first specimen from the quarry to be found, on display at the Carnegie Museum

Carnegie Quarry is the type locality of seven species: the turtles Glyptops utahensis [8] [a] and Dinochelys whitei [9] and the dinosaurs Apatosaurus louisae , [10] Uintasaurus douglassi [11] [b] , Camarasaurus annae [12] [c] Camptosaurus aphanoecetes , [14] [d] and Dryosaurus elderae . [15]

Numerous scientifically important fossils have been recovered from the quarry, including the most complete sauropod fossil ever found, the juvenile Camarasaurus specimen CM 11338, and the largest nearly complete dinosaur skeleton ever found, [16] the Apatosaurus specimen CM 3018, which was the specimen that led Douglass to discover the site.

Sauropod skeletons from the quarry are displayed at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, and Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

List of fossil taxa

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Glyptops utahensis is now considered a synonym of Glyptops plicatulus [9]
  2. ↑ Uintasaurus douglassi is considered a synonym of Camarasaurus lentus.
  3. ↑ Camarasaurus annae is considered a synonym of Camarasaurus lentus [13]
  4. 1 2 Camptosaurus aphanoecetes is classified in a separate genus, Uteodon, by some, but not all, [e] [f] researchers.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl Douglass</span> American paleontologist

Earl Douglass was an American paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur Apatosaurus, playing a central role in one of the most important fossil finds in North America. By 1922 Earl had unearthed and shipped more than 700,000 pounds of material including nearly 20 complete skeletons of Jurassic dinosaurs such as Diplodocus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, Barosaurus, Camarasaurus and Brontosaurus.

References

  1. ↑ Hunt-Foster, ReBecca (2024-01-12). "Discovery, preservation, and protection of notable paleontological resources from Dinosaur National Monument, Utah and Colorado". Parks Stewardship Forum. 40 (1). doi:10.5070/P540162933. ISSN   2688-187X.
  2. ↑ Foster, John R. (2003). "Paleoecological Analysis of the Vertebrate Fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain Region, U.S.A.". New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin. 23: 1–95. ISSN   1524-4156.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Carpenter, Kenneth (2018). "Rocky start of Dinosaur National Monument (USA), the world's first dinosaur geoconservation site". Geoconservation Research. 1 (1): 1–20.
  4. 1 2 3 Chure, Daniel J.; McIntosh, John S. (1990). "Stranger in a strange land: a brief history of the paleontological operations at Dinosaur National Monument". Earth Sciences History. 9 (1): 34–40. Bibcode:1990ESHis...9...34C. doi:10.17704/eshi.9.1.x8l67355k7745582. ISSN   0736-623X. JSTOR   24138198.
  5. ↑ Maidment, S.C.R.; Balikova, D.; Muxworthy, A.R. (2017). "Magnetostratigraphy of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and prospects for using magnetostratigraphy as a correlative tool in the Morrison Formation". Terrestrial Depositional Systems. Elsevier. pp. 279–302. ISBN   978-0-12-803243-5.
  6. 1 2 Brezinski, David K.; Kollar, Albert D. (2018-03-20). "Origin of the Carnegie Quarry sandstone (Morrison Formation, Jurassic) at Dinosaur National Monument, Jensen, Utah". PALAIOS. 33 (3): 94–105. Bibcode:2018Palai..33...94B. doi:10.2110/palo.2017.052. ISSN   0883-1351.
  7. ↑ Carpenter, Kenneth (2013-05-16). "History, sedimentology, and taphonomy of the Carnegie Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 91 (3): 153–232. Bibcode:2013AnCM...81..153C. doi:10.2992/007.081.0301.
  8. ↑ Gilmore, Charles W. (1916). "Description of a new species of tortoise from the Jurassic of Utah". Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 10 (1–2): 7–12. Bibcode:1916AnCM...10....7G. doi:10.5962/p.78055. ISSN   0097-4463.
  9. 1 2 Gaffney, Eugene S. (1979). "The Jurassic turtles of North America". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 162 (3).
  10. ↑ Holland, W. J. (1916). "A new species of Apatosaurus". Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 10 (1–2): 143–145. Bibcode:1916AnCM...10..143H. doi:10.5962/p.78060.
  11. ↑ Holland, W. J. (1924). "Description of the type of Uintasaurus douglassi Holland". Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 15 (2–3): 119–138. Bibcode:1924AnCM...15..119H. doi:10.5962/p.226752.
  12. ↑ Ellinger, Tage U. H. (1950). "Camarosaurus annae—a new American sauropod dinosaur". The American Naturalist. 84 (816): 225–228. Bibcode:1950ANat...84..225.. doi:10.1086/281626.
  13. ↑ McIntosh, John S. (1981-10-16). "Annotated catalogue of the dinosaurs (Reptilia, Archosauria) in the collections of Carnegie Museum of Natural History". Bulletin of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. 18: 1–67. doi:10.5962/p.228597. ISSN   0145-9058.
  14. ↑ Carpenter, Kenneth; Wilson, Yvonne (2008-02-29). "A new species of Camptosaurus (Ornithopoda: Dinosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and a biomechanical analysis of its forelimb". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 76 (4): 227–263. doi:10.2992/0097-4463(2008)76[227:ANSOCO]2.0.CO;2. ISSN   0097-4463.
  15. ↑ Carpenter, Kenneth; Galton, Peter (2018-08-17). "A photo documentation of bipedal ornithischian dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, USA". Geology of the Intermountain West. 5: 167–207. doi: 10.31711/giw.v5.pp167-207 . ISSN   2380-7601.
  16. ↑ Paul, Gregory (2019-12-31). "Determining the largest known land animal: a critical comparison of differing methods for restoring the volume and mass of extinct animals". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 85 (4): 335–358. Bibcode:2019AnCM...85..335P. doi:10.2992/007.085.0403. ISSN   0097-4463.
  17. Carpenter, Kenneth; Lamanna, Matthew C. (2015-11-15). "The braincase assigned to the ornithopod dinosaur Uteodon McDonald, 2011, reassigned to Dryosaurus Marsh, 1894: implications for iguanodontian morphology and taxonomy". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 83 (2): 149–165. Bibcode:2015AnCM...83..149C. doi:10.2992/007.083.0201. eISSN   1943-6300. ISSN   0097-4463.
  18. Foster, John Russell (2020). Jurassic West: the dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and their world. Life of the past (2 ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN   978-0-253-05158-5.
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