An updated edition of the popular work that has enchanted and educated all ages about dinosaurs in Utah

A comprehensive account of "Utah's" dinosaurs, this book uses extensive research performed in Utah's natural museum to describe dinosaur anatomy, feeding, reproduction, and social behaviors in the context of the changing geological record. 75 line drawings & maps. 47 color plates.

The Grand Staircase region, located in Southern Utah, is highly regarded as one of the best places in the world to study the period near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs--a time called the Late Cretaceous. In a relatively short period (geologically speaking) of about 25 million years, southern Utah was at times covered with an ocean teeming with life, swampy shorelines, and massive rivers draining a huge mountain range in the west. This diversity of plant and animal life has led to incredible fossil discoveries in the Late Cretaceous rocks, that have become a critical piece in a puzzle that stretches from Alaska to Mexico. In Where Dinosaurs Roamed, Christa Sadler looks at this important era in the history of life. Modern mammals, birds, and flowering plants were just getting their start, slowly gaining ground in the ecosystems of the time. Many of the fossils that paleontologists have found in southern Utah are unique: big, headline-grabbing creatures such as a dinosaur with fifteen horns; a distinctive cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex; a peculiar scissor-clawed dinosaur with feathers; and a thirty-foot long alligator relative. Add to this a host of smaller vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants, and paleontologists have been able to recreate entire ecosystems from the time between 74 and 100 million years ago. Altogether, these finds paint a picture of life in a very hot world, and may have lessons to teach us about our future world as well.

For 160 million years, some of the world's most spectacular dinosaurs roamed and roared in ancient Utah. This marvelous book features full-color illustrations and profiles of thirty-two Utah dinosaurs with fun dino facts and cartoons scattered throughout. Nominated for Utah Children's Book of the Year in 2002, Dinosaurs of Utah comes with a travel guide and locater map of the state's many dinosaur digs, museums and attractions.

"Engaging images accompany information about the Utahraptor. The combination of high-interest subject matter and light text is intended for students in grades 2 through 7" --

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is the location of one of the best-known terrestrial records for the late Cretaceous. Prior fieldwork confirmed the richness of the area, but a major effort begun in the new century has documented over 2,000 new vertebrate fossil sites, provided new radiometric dates, and identified five new genera of ceratopsids, two new species of hadrosaur, a probable new genus of hypsilophodontid, new pachycephalosaurs and ankylosaurs, several kinds of theropods (including a new genus of oviraptor and a new tyrannosaur), plus the most complete specimen of a Late Cretaceous therizinosaur ever collected from North America, and much more. The research documented in this book is rewriting our understanding of Late Cretaceous paleobiogeography and dinosaur phyletics. At the Top of the Grand Staircase: The Late Cretaceous of Southern Utah is a major stepping stone toward a total synthesis of the ecology and evolution of the Late Cretaceous ecosystems of western North America.

The San Rafael Swell is an anticline, or a geological uplift, that originally looked like an oval bowl turned upside down. Over time it has been carved into castle-like formations and deep canyons by erosive conditions. This landscape seemed so formidable to early cartographers that it was the last area in the continental United States to be mapped. The San Rafael Swell itself has no permanent human inhabitants, but small towns are scattered along its northern and eastern borders where first American Indians and later cowboys, ranchers, and miners made their homes. The hardy settlers of these towns familiarized themselves with what they called "the Desert" and gradually discovered its treasures and its secrets.