Utah is one of the most important archeological zones on the planet. Visitors can see or excavate undiscovered dinosaur species at the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price or visit ​​Jurassic National Monument, with the densest concentration of late-Jurassic bones ever found. Rachel Rueckert in Utah Elevated.

I first saw Price Utah in January of 1968. I know it was January because we were on our way to Aspen Colorado to go skiing. We were young – and hardy – and had driven from Oakland California to Salt Lake City Utah in one long day and were going to Aspen in a another long day. Now, even with freeways, it would probably take us four days. I don’t remember Price but I remember Helper, the city – town? – next door as seemingly miserable under grey skies and down-wind from a very dirty coal mine.

We had originally decided to stay in Price because it was near Nine-Mile Canyon, a treasure trove of Early American rock art. But Price brought the bonus of a smallish museum with the largest collection of fossils in Utah. This is a coal mining area, or was at least, and, apparently, coal beds come with lots of fossils (although, I’ve just learned, the layers between coal beds often produce the best fossils).  

I’m not particularly interested in dinosaurs: I do care enough to have been interested in and an early convert to Robert Bakker’s theory that, at least, some dinosaurs were warm blooded but not enough to know the full name of any dinosaur except Tyrannosaurus rex. I am also not particularly interested in early mammals; even less interested, actually. But I am very interested in the natural world and evolution as its primary driver – that’s not the right word, maybe creator – of our world so I’m always interested in Natural History Museums. The Prehistoric Museum, Utah State University Eastern – doesn’t that sound like the name is translated slightly wrong? – is a charming small museum that hits way above its weight. .

It may not be for everybody, but I think the principal diorama of two skeletons is a knockout. It is a mythic scene of an early Utahan, Homo sapiens, killing an even older Utahan, Mammuthus columbi. The scene takes place about 10,000 years ago at about 9,0000 feet, and Homo sapiens, that’s us, had arrived some time earlier in what is now Utah . The landscape wasn’t much different from today, but many of the very large animals that ruled the world 10,000 years ago are now extinct. Killed by the exotic humans which archeologists increasingly think started to arrive in North America about 29,000 years before this killing.

The size difference between the two animals is striking, as is the use of atlatl by the human. It is hard to ignore the implication that we are a dangerous species and that we are using our tools to change the earth.