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Showing results for tags 'grand staircase-escalante'.
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Southern Utah - Grand Staircase between the Vermillion and Chocolate cliffs section. The geological period for this location is Upper Triassic. I was out exploring the cliff of a butte (more like a half-butte since one side was cliff and the other gently slopes north into alluvial sand) and came across what seemed like a very flat ancient creek bed, now just a small desert wash. It was strewn with quite large river rocks that did not belong, and were not found outside this sand creek. It was very cool, as this "river" was essentially at the top of the cliff and gently flowing away from the edge, so even heavy desert monsoons couldn't produce enough run off water flow to smooth these rocks since the cliff formed. Whatever mountain these rocks came from is long gone. I came across this egg-shaped rock. (8-12inches, 20-30cm long) , and the surface markings were really unusual. I took the photo below, but was being dragged along by my partner who couldn't care less about rocks, so I didn't get forensic photos. I assumed in the moment it was just a very egg-looking river rock, even though it was a different type than the others. The cliff area was otherwise entirely the typical sedimentary rock you'd expect. But after a year looking at the photo, and looking at actual dino eggs, it didn't seem like a totally crazy thought. Petrified wood is known to be in the area also, but I wasn't aware of that at the time. I attached a photo of the other rocks in the sand creek to set the scene a bit. Some of these rocks looked like they really needed to be broken in half to see what might be inside, but I didn't have my rock hammer as I thought I was just going to see normal sandstone. Thanks for any thoughts...
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Plant-eating Dinosaurs Consumed Crustaceans - Cretaceous, Utah
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
Dinosaur dung reveals giant plant-eaters ate meat By Ben Guarino, Washington Post, Sept. 22, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/09/22/dinosaur-dung-reveals-giant-plant-eaters-ate-meat/ 'Vegetarian' Dinos Made Exception for Shellfish, Poop Study Shows By Laura Geggel, September 21, 2017 https://www.livescience.com/60470-poop-reveals-vegetarian-dinosaurs-ate-shellfish.html The open access paper is: Chin, Karen, Rodney M. Feldmann and Jessica N. Tashman, 2017, Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 11163(2017) doi:10.1038/s41598-017-11538-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11538-w Yours, Paul H.- 1 reply
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