The Backwards Museum – Not The Painter

May 18, 2024 – Day 64

Vernal / Dinosaurland KOA Holiday, Vernal, UT

Today we headed off to the museum. The one we should have gone to yesterday instead of visiting Flaming Gorge. But you know maybe not. We could now read about the geologic strata having already seen them. Yeah, so we did it on purpose—we’re not changing our story.

But first, a “thorough the windshield” shot of the Zion Bank aka “The Parcel Post Bank” aka “the Bank that was sent by Mail”. It’s like a real life version of Johnny Cash’s song, One Piece at a Time. Maybe he got the idea for the song from the bank’s history. In 1916–1917 William H. Coltharp realized that the Parcel Post rates made it cheaper to ship about 80,000 masonry bricks in fifty-pound (22.6 kg) packages via the U.S. Post Office Salt Lake City to Vernal than a traditional way. Immediately on delivery of these bricks the US Postal service revised the rules to read 200 pounds. The United States Postmaster General Albert Sidney Burleson explicitly stated in a letter that “it is not the intent of the United States Postal Service that buildings be shipped through the mail.”

Now for the Dino Museum!

We paid a tiny entry free, happy that the similarly aged cashier didn’t ask if we wanted the senior discount. That’s coming, but Not Right Now. (But we would have saved $3 each!)

They told us that there was a short movie through a door, starting in 11 minutes. Paul checked his watch, 11 minutes from now wasn’t a specific time, nor did they tell us how long the movie was, so we just wandered around the lobby some. There’s a giant dinosaur there, of course. (susan here: everything in Vernal and surrounding communities is dinosaur themed. They really lean into it.)

That’s a cast of a Diplodocus. We’re not sure, but that cast may be from the cast in the linked Wikipedia page. Andrew Carnegie funded a lot of Paleontology in this area. Naturally, he got the real skeleton.

Notice how the neck is horizontal. At one time researcher believed that the massive size of these creatures meant they had to be water dwellers so the skeleton were always shown with the neck upright and out of the water. They’ve recently changed their mind, realizing that the water pressure would mean they couldn’t breath, they would be crushed by more that 20 feet of water.

And we science-geeked out looking into the lab where they do real paleontologist work.

There as a sign telling us what was being worked on at each lettered station. Nope, we didn’t think to take a shot of it. We do remember that E was the sand station, where they use crushed garnet to support pieces. Garnet is used because it it dustless. Who knew?

We still were unsure about the movie starting time so we ignored the movie and went up the stairs right behind the big dinosaur skeleton cast.

There was a display of rocks that fluoresced until ultraviolet (black) light, very pretty.

Then a display of dinosaur paintings from a revered local artist, Ernest Untermann Sr, who passed away in 1956.

Around the corner, finally, some bones!

Useless Sauropod Trivia

• What evolution designed, Hollywood copied- thus the “Umbaran starfighter” based on Apatosaurus cervical vertebrae, and seen in the Star Wars series, The Clone Wars.

• Although the Sinclair Oil Company uses a sauropod dinosaur as its icon, fossil fuels, contrary to popular thought, are not formed from dinosaur fossils; rather they are the remains of tiny marine life called phytoplankton.

• Sauropods inhabited every known continent, including Antarctica.
From the sign on the wall

Next up was a bizarrely curated exhibit showing indigenous people’s clothing and tool making, along with a collection of rocks. Huh? Definitely not dinosaur related!

Around this time we’re starting to think that maybe we should have tried for the senior discount.

But, we soldiered on, down to a gallery with lots of geologic information, and rocks and fossils.
(susan here: for me it would turn out to be information overload. There’s really only so much “Cool!” one can look at before it’s too just too much cool.)

Morrison Formation

World-famous dinosaur fossils are found in these rocks. This formation was deposited over most of the Western U.S. It’s easy to spot with red, maroon, purple, white and green layers. We’ve seen this formation in the Painted Desert in Arizona.
From a sign in a display

There were 3 or 4 alcoves like this one, we were really starting to get museum’d out, this was really deep geologic, Paleontologic nirvana, but we’re not into that. We’re really starting to wonder how lame this museum will be.

But we saw a cool wooly mammoth out a window. He needs to be repaired every few years because birds take the hemp they use for hair to built their nests!

A walk through diorama showed what (some period we can’t remember the name of) would have looked like. By that point we were were burned out and the geologic eras started to blur together. At least it wasn’t rocks in a display case.

Finally, more skeletons (or casts)

Did you know there’s Saber-toothed Herbivore? That’s right!

UINTATHERES (you IN tah-THEERS) were among the largest land mammals during the late Eocene. Nothing alive today looks quite like them! These plant eaters had a set of intimidating saber-like tusks and six horns on their heads. This family went extinct before the end of the Eocene.

PAPIER-MACHE SKELETON, Uintatherium, 48 MYA, Eocene epoch, Bridger Formation, Wyoming, FHPR 1155

One wall of the exhibit was covered with clay tiles, all containing fossils.

The researchers, what we’ll eventually see in the movie, cut out the tiles and the split them, revealing whatever was inside!

We went through a hallway which had tiles on the ground, going back, or forwards, in time, but the letters were upside down? Huh. We would later find out why. But look, around the corner was the big room of bones!

At some point we realized that we’ve been doing the museum backwards. Of course the showy stuff is up front and all the rock/dino-nerd stuff is at the end.

STEGOSAURUS (STEG-OH-SORE-US) Dinosaurs are easy to spot because of the plates along their spines. Look carefully, you’ll also see tail spikes and a small head.

Stegosaurs were the most widespread armored dinosaurs in North America during the late Jurassic. Fossils of Stegosaurus are relatively plentiful in the Morrison Formation-you can see some exposed in the rock at Dinosaur National Monument.

Fossilized teeth indicate that stegosaurs were herbivores. We know very little about what plants they ate. The tail spikes were probably for defense against their many predators.

After the next gallery we found ourselves in the movie cinema (of course!) and watched a fairly entertaining short about dinosaurs, the area, and how they are collected.

We should have gone in there first. But… we weren’t the only people to enter the theater from the “exit” so we felt somewhat vindicated that we went in through the out door. (susan here: we got all that nerdy boring stuff over with and ended on a high note with the cool stuff!)

We asked the ranger, who appeared to 12 or 13 years old but was probably 19 or 20, for some easy hikes in the area to see interesting things. We mentioned the Moonshine Arch, which we tried to visit yesterday, and they gave us some further recommendations.

But they day wasn’t done. Vernal is covered in small fiberglass dinosaurs, always painted like the business that placed them, for example, the 7-11 dino has a 7-11 logo and the Lemongrass restaurant has a yellow dino. But we had to visit the famous Dinah the Pink Dinosaur that welcomes visitors from the east.