Rain lashed the windshield as I drove my usual route around my stomping grounds, pondering how to spend my day outside my home despite the cold, wet weather.
After driving north down Simms for some time, I turned and followed Belleview west into a quiet foothills neighborhood, nodding my head to Ted Nugent’s “Tooth, Fang, and Claw”. Belleview turned into Willow-something-or-other, which then turned into highway 8 towards Red Rocks. To my right, hereford cattle grazed in fresh pastures among the 290-million-year-old red rock boulders found all along the Front Range. To my left, two wet horses (a bay and a chestnut) cantered towards a lean-to for shelter from the worsening rain. Just as I was nearing the little town of Morrison, two mule deer does leapt out in front of my speeding Xterra from the ditch, my mind briefly going blank as my tires screeched on the wet blacktop and I swerved to avoid them. Shaken up a bit but okay, I took in a long, deep sigh to relax my racing heart. Just then, I caught sight of the Morrison dinosaur museum on the side of the road, open and accepting visitors.
When it comes to the science of nature both past and present, I am a huge nerd. When I was a little girl, I could name basically every dinosaur there was and what period they lived during. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten most of my dinosaurs and have instead moved onto identifying other, more modern animals. But, I still greatly enjoy learning about earth’s history, especially the history of where I live (which is ridiculously rich. I’ve probably passed by millions of fossils on my hikes in Ken Caryl Valley, and not even noticed).
I found a dirt lot to flip a u-ey in, and made my way into the gravel parking lot by the little museum, rain pouring down harder than ever. I rushed into the cabin and was greeted by a large allosaurus skull among other fossils and casts. An older woman at the counter beckoned me over, and asked me if I wanted her to give me a tour or if I just wanted to use the app that day. Being the socially-anxious introvert I am, I opted to download the museum’s app and guide myself around the little museum.
On the museum’s app, I scrolled through the list of specimens they had, and began the self-guided tour, starting with allosaurus in the Jurassic period. Allosaurus (one of my favorite dinosaurs) roamed the mountainless savannahs that Colorado was once home to about 150 million years ago. Allosaurus was a very aggressive predator, capable of taking down other dinosaurs much larger than itself. For reference, wolverines are basically the modern equivalent of Allosaurus; angry all the time, crazy enough to steal a meal from a hangry grizzly bear without breaking a sweat, and easily capable of bringing down a bull moose on its own. Yes, it is true; Allosaurus could easily take down even the largest sauropods in the Jurassic period, all by itself.
From there, I was met with a handful of neck vertebrae and a couple leg bones from an Apatosaurus, first discovered in Morrison in the late 1870’s, in the midst of the Bone Wars. There were also Apatosaurus tracks displayed in the museum, which were discovered in Morrison as well. Among the adult-sized tracks, there were tiny tracks of a baby Apatosaurus (the smallest known sauropod discovered in the world). According to those tracks, Apatosaurus babies weighed around thirty pounds, compared to the average adult Apatosaurus which weighed around 40,000 pounds! And, I thought a little bull calf weighing 60 pounds growing up to 600 pounds in less than a year was impressive! Apparently, baby Apatosauruses (Apatosauri?) also ran on their hind legs at first, at least according to those tracks. That’s pretty damn hysterical to envision!
Across the room from the Apatosaurus tracks was a few fossils belonging to Colorado’s state dinosaur, Stegosaurus. It’s a pretty iconic dinosaur, and has been known about since scientists discovered the first Stegosaurus fossils in the 185o’s (in Morrison, I’ll add). Most Stegosaurus tracks are of their hind feet, because their hind feet carried much more weight than their front feet. Most paleontologists today believe that Stegosaurus mainly walked on all four feet, but could rear up to reach tree branches for food. However, scientists still argue about the point of Stegosaurus’s back plates. Some say those plates offered protection from predators, while others think the plates were for attracting a mate, like how turkeys puff up their feathers to show how big they are to attract hens, or how gorillas show of their massive fangs to attract female gorillas and scare off smaller male gorillas. Man, I feel kind of bad for the poor Stegosaurus that had only tiny back plates. It’s almost as sad as the blue whale whose call is a few hertz too high to be heard by other whales.
I followed signs to the next floor, which displayed local fossils from the Cretaceous period in one room, and fossils from the Ice Age in another room. From behind a closed door towards the back of the Ice Age room, there was an interesting buzzing noise, almost as if there was a dentist’s office back there. I figured I’d investigate that room later, after I was done exploring the Cretaceous period and the Ice Age.
To the right of the stairs on the second floor, a Utahraptor skeleton stood preening its feathers. Of course, it was just the skeleton, but fossil and evolutionary evidence has shown that most dinosaurs had feathers, and feathers require some care. So, of course even raptors had to have a little bit of hygiene, lest their feathers became all matted and broken. Aside from that, Utahraptor specifically had claws almost as large as bananas, which they used to rip and tear into anything that was unlucky enough to get too close to it.
Like other dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, Utahraptor didn't roam the mountains of Colorado. Instead, Utahraptor, alongside T-rex and Triceratops (which were also on display), lived at sea-level in tropical conditions. I still can't believe that Colorado was once a tropical paradise with an ocean. But, roughly 120 million years ago, the mountains we know today were still underground by the earth's core, and didn't break through the soil until about five million years ago, when mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed the earth.
Speaking of which, a giant mammoth skull greeted me as I ventured through the doorway of the Ice Age. Mammoth teeth and fur were on display in an acrylic box to the right of the mammoth skull. I knelt down to study those fossils and read about them on the plaques behind them. As I read about how mammoths and mastodons were once as common as the mule deer (which, interestingly enough, lived at the same time as mammoths and still look the same today as they did then), a woman came up behind me and my soul nearly left my body.
"Oh, goodness!" she gasped as I startled to my feet.
"Oh, it's okay. It's okay." I panted, "I get spooked easily."
"Ah, I see. Well, I was just coming up to ask if you're enjoying yourself so far." she smiled.
"I am." I nodded, "I haven't been here in years. Things have changed since then?"
"Yes, they have." The paleontologist replied, "In fact..."
She reached into the acrylic box and lifted up a mammoth tooth still partially encased in white clay, "This was found just a few months ago by someone who lives near the Ken Caryl Ranch house. He was digging up his yard to make room for a shed, and this tooth was waiting for him just a few inches below the soil."
She then handed the tooth to me. It was a little bigger than my hand and weighed close to five pounds. Bits of white clay fell to the floor as I carefully handled the tooth.
"That's crazy!" I said in the most Joe-Rogan way possible, "I live right by the ranch house. Are mammoth remains common around here?"
"They are!" the woman exclaimed as I carefully handed the mammoth tooth back to her, "Lots of people have unearthed mammoth remains in that area. They were migratory animals, after all. I wouldn't be surprised if, over time, more prehistoric fossils and artifacts were uncovered in the valley. I actually suggest you do a little digging yourself. Who knows? Maybe you'll be lucky enough to discover a mammoth tooth yourself!"
"I wonder if I can start digging up the backyard without pissing my mom off" I thought to myself.
"Or..." the woman trailed off as she beckoned me over to a door leading into a back room, "You may find other fossils, such as this one!"
She led me into the room where a couple of men with buzzing tools were chipping away at a massive white boulder, and then patted what looked to be a large piece of the boulder that had been cut off and placed on a table adjacent to the door, "You'll uncover an allosaurus fossil mixed in with lungfish fossils, such as this one, found just outside of this very cabin."
"In fact, most of the boulder these big pieces belong to is still outside by the parking lot." one of the men chipping away at the boulder butted in, "We had to saw it in half, and actually ended up cutting through a few fossils!"
