Two great meetings

Hello everyone! I am back from the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources and the Advances in Late Cretaceous Paleontology and Geology in the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument meetings in Saint George, Utah. These were two really great meetings! I learned quite a bit and had a really good time! Thanks to all of those of you who read the blog for saying hello. It was fun to hear that you keep up with the random things I post here. I was also fun to see one of my blog post/comments on the PRPA worked into a talk! 

It was hard to pick one talk at the 8CFR that stands out - they were all really good and interesting. I did enjoy the open forum sessions that we had and wish that a few of them could have lasted longer! I learned so much about my current work at this meeting! There are so many things that I was either not aware of or little details that I did not know the whole story on. It was great! There was a nice social mixer the night before the meeting started and a great get together at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm the next evening. This is a really great museum! If you have never had a chance to visit I highly recommend it!

Above: a eubrontes track with radiating mudcracks.

Below: tracks from the largest single block of dinosaur tracks on display in a museum anywhere in the world, discovered on Feb. 10. 2004.

I really feel like this meeting was a great learning experience and I wish more academic paleontologist had attended. I really think they missed out on some important details, especially surrounding the PRPA and any changes that may be coming up (such as needing permits to collect invertebrate fossils on federal lands, which could happen). Also regarding the PRPA, Ted Vlamis, the Government Affairs Committee Chair for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, gave a great detailed keynote address about the history of getting the PRPA passed. It was amazing the amount of time and effort it took to get this bill passed and signed into law! I never realized how much time it took! I am looking forward to sharing an abbreviated version of this history with you soon (I took 3 pages of notes!).

Below: Group photos of meeting attendees

There were many good talks at the ALCP meeting. This was a different type of meeting compared to the 8CFR, being more research oriented. Eric Roberts and Zubair Jinnah's talks got my stratigraphy mind thinking about a few research interests I have been tossing around. I missed Ian Miller and Kirk Johnson's talk on the flora of Grand Staircase, but I hear it was really good. Mike Knell gave a good talk about the freshwater turtles of the Monument, which reminds me to tell you all to check out the Gaffney Turtle Symposium (Oct. 17th & 18th of 2009)! The evening of the first day there was a nice social mixer at the hotel where Alan Titus and his band, Zion Rocks, preformed. They were great!

The second day was a good, but long day (maybe long because we stayed up to late partying or because I had to be the AV chick all day). It got started off on the wrong foot as I, in my sleep deprived state, had unplugged the USB devices that ran the slide show remote (I though it was just a flash drive someone had forgotten to remove). This messed up poor Barry Albright's talk, and I had to advance his slides manually while everyone else had to hear "next slide" over and over at 8AM.  By the next talk we had three working remotes and all was good. There were several good talks in the morning on everything from plesiosaurs, to Deinosuchus in the Kaiparowits and Wahweap formations (in press), to taphonomy of dinosaur bonbeds in the Kaiparowits Formation (one of my favorite talks). Scott Sampson kicked off the afternoon talks with a review of the dinosaur fauna of the monument, with other talks on mammals, birds, theropods, hadrosaurs, and ceratopsains (!). Scott Sampson also closed out the meeting with a great keynote talk on the late Campanian of Laramidia ("West America"), which would have been a very interesting time to have visited. 

These two meetings were two of the best I have been to in a long time. I hope many of you were there to enjoy them. If not, remember that you can still download the programs and read the abstracts!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

¡hasta la vista!

Have a good week folks! I am off to the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources and the Advances in Late Cretaceous Paleontology and Geology in the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument meetings in Saint George, Utah. I may be able to post while at the meeting if I have internet, but if not I will post some notes on the meeting next week when I get back. I will not have a Fieldwork Friday post either this week. 

Hope to see some of you there!

ReBecca
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Cooperative Management of Paleontological Resources on Federal Lands in Mesa County, Colorado

The abstract John and I wrote for the 8CFR was trimmed for some reason, so here is our intended abstract in its original entirety:

Cooperative Management of Paleontological Resources on Federal Lands in Mesa County, Colorado

HUNT-FOSTER, ReBecca K., and FOSTER, John R., Museum of Western Colorado, Dinosaur Journey, 550 Jurassic Ct., Fruita, Colorado 81521

The Museum of Western Colorado has long had a history of working in cooperation with the local federal agencies (particularly the Bureau of Land Management) to help manage and preserve the unique and important paleontological finds of Mesa County, Colorado. Some of the most important areas on BLM land (most within McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area) have been designated as Museum/BLM cooperative management Research Natural Areas, set aside for their paleontological resources.

Museum projects with the Grand Junction Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management date back to at least 1976 with the excavation of the type specimen of Ceratosaurus magnicornis from the Fruita Paleontological Area (FPA). With the 1981 discovery of the Mygatt-Moore Quarry (MMQ) in Rabbit Valley, the museum began a 25 year working relationship with the local BLM field office to study this locality in the Morrison Formation, one of the largest dinosaur sites in the unit. Further work in the BLM lands of Rabbit Valley has included the excavation of the Averett Camptosaurus in 1982 and the Bollan Stegosaurus in 1986. Other activities in Rabbit Valley have included the construction of the Trail Through Time. This mile-and-a-half loop trail takes visitors through an interpreted hike along Jurassic-age river channels. An interpretive kiosk at the trail head describes the flora and fauna of the Morrison Formation as well as activities that take place at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry. Explanations of fossilized bones seen in situ are given on interpretive panels along the trail.

The Museum also worked with the local BLM field office to build a trail though the Split Rock area of Rabbit Valley. This developed trail leads the public though a Jurassic-age river channel that has produced a high abundance of dinosaur material, including a partial skeleton of the small ornithopod Othnielosaurus. In 2002-2003, with assistance from the BLM, the museum worked to salvage an Allosaurus skeleton that was being vandalized along the Split Rock trail. In 2004-2005 an articulated Apatosaurus was removed from maroon mudstone in the Twin Juniper Quarry in Rabbit Valley.

The Museum has worked with Colorado National Monument resource managers to inventory Jurassic tracksites in the Wingate Sandstone in the canyons of the monument (mostly Grallator trackways), and to collect, preserve and study only the second known set of turtle tracks from the Morrison Formation.

Elmer Riggs of the Field Columbian Museum excavated an Apatosaurus in Fruita, Colorado, at Dinosaur Hill, in 1901. This site is important because the specimen led to Riggs’s recognition that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus represented the same animal. A trail was installed at this site in 2003 to interpret the unique history and paleontological resources of the area. A trail at the nearby FPA was installed in 2001 to interpret the globally significant mammal fauna of the Morrison Formation found there. The trails at Dinosaur Hill and at the FPA are cooperative efforts managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Museum of Western Colorado, and the City of Fruita.

The Late Jurassic-age Mygatt-Moore Quarry is located in the middle Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation. Excavations have taken place every year since 1984 (25 seasons) at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry. On this BLM-managed land the Museum leads public fossils digs for four months a year, with 250-350 public diggers per year participating under the supervision of staff paleontologists. This hands-on opportunity gives the museum the opportunity to convey important scientific information, while also education the public on the importance of stewardship and fossil resource protection on federal lands. Over 800+ cataloged specimens from seven species of dinosaur, including the type specimen of the first Jurassic ankylosaur Mymoorapelta, have been recovered from this bonebed. The most abundant taxon at the quarry is the theropod Allosaurus (29%), which is represented by 233 skeletal elements indicating a minimum of 6 individuals (5 adults, 1 juvenile); in addition, more than 190 mostly shed teeth of Allosaurus have been recovered from the site. The sauropod Apatosaurus is next most abundant (20%) with 160 elements representing 5 individuals (3 adults, 1 sub-adult, 1 juvenile). Approximately 19% of the sample consists of bones of the ankylosaur Mymoorapelta, mostly osteoderms and lateral spines (2 individuals). The three most abundant sauropods in the Morrison Formation (Camarasaurus, Apatosaurus, and Diplodocus) also are preserved at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry, but unlike within the formation as a whole, at the MMQ Apatosaurus accounts for 85% of the sauropod bones at the site; in the formation overall, Camarasaurus is the most abundant sauropod. Also preserved at the site are the carnivorous dinosaur Ceratosaurus (6 teeth) and the small ornithopod dinosaur Othnielosaurus (one jaw fragment), the latter first identified during the 2008 season. Non-dinosaurian taxa preserved at the site are very rare but include a turtle, a crocodilian, and a probable pterosaur.

Above the main bone layer at MMQ is a shallow lake deposit, which preserves some of the only articulated fish skeletons in the Morrison Formation, including “Hulettia” hawesi and the type and referred specimens of Morrolepis schaefferi. Also found in this unit have been the fish cf. Leptolepis and an as yet unnamed crayfish.

Museum of Western Colorado and the Grand Junction Field Office of the BLM are investigating the possible installation of a permanent protective building over the Mygatt-Moore Quarry. Given the abundance of large, well preserved dinosaur bones at this site, the building could serve as a permanent and educational exhibit that would help to interpret the quarry in the long term, while also providing year-round access and a secured, on-going excavation area.


© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster and John R. Foster

8th Conference on Fossil Resources Program now available

The advanced program for the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources is now available for download online here (PDF). Check out the great line up of talks. I think this is really going to be a great meeting to attend. Looking forward to seeing many of you there! 

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Abstract reminder: 8th Conference on Fossil Resources

Just a quick friendly reminder that abstracts for the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources are due March 1, 2009, 6:00 pm (MST). Details can be found in the second circular.

Looking forward to seeing you all in May!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Advances in Western Interior Late Cretaceous Paleontology and Geology

“Advances in Western Interior Late Cretaceous Paleontology and Geology”
May 22 - 23, 2009
Dixie Center, St. George, Utah
With Pre-and-Post-Meeting Field Trips


This meeting is being convened by Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and partners to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Kaiparowits Basin Project, a collaborative effort focused on researching all aspects of the Late Cretaceous geology and paleontology of south-central Utah. The conference’s vision is to provide an opportunity for the Late Cretaceous research community and the public to exchange ideas and present findings of recent work in the Western Interior of North America. Utah themed papers presented will be considered for inclusion in a compendium volume on southern Utah’s Late Cretaceous Geology and Paleontology expected to be published in late 2010 by Indiana University Press. Abstracts are due by 5:00 pm MST February 2nd.

For schedules, registration, hotel information and to submit an abstract, please see the website.

The meeting follows the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources, May, 19-21, also to be held at the Dixie Center. For information on this meeting, please see their website.

8th Conference on Fossil Resources

The other day in my post on the Cambrian Explosion conference Jerry reminded me that in 2009 we have another alternative for those of us who can't swing the trip to Bristol for SVP - the 8th Conference on Fossil Resources (or 8th Federal Fossil Conference). The last meeting was in May of 2006 in Albuquerque. The next meeting will take place May 18-21, 2009, in Saint George, Utah! They will be having workshops and field trips (I am sure those will be great, given that the area is great for paleo), with a proceedings volume being published for the meeting. There is a call for papers currently, and any that are pre-peer reviewed and submitted by November 30, 2008, will be included in the volume. "Presentations on management issues, and success stories between various organizations, individuals, and land management agencies are of particular interest."

A symposium on 'Advances in Late Cretaceous paleontology in the Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument' and the 2009 Utah Friends of Paleontology annual meeting will be held in conjunction immediately follow the conference in the same venue (May 22-23, the Dixie Center). The meeting will be open to anyone who would like to present research findings related to the theme. This should be very interesting. So many new and awesome things have been coming out of GSENM over the past 10 years or so.

As Jerry said best: "it will be a veritable paleo lovefest for those who find the dollar-to-pounds exchange rate to be too intractable, as well as for those planning to hit Bristol anyway but just can't get enough of paleo conferences!" So check out those links and start making your plans!

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