Eye-Popping Jurassic Fossil Trove Discovered in Utah as Lake Powell Water Level Drops

Researchers discovered the first bed of bones belonging to a near-mammalian reptile found in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah, an “extremely rare” find, the National Park Service announced. 

The bonebed was found in March while crews were documenting fossil track sites along Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the park service said. The fossils were deemed one of the most important fossil vertebrate discoveries in the U.S. this year. 

Paleontologists found impressions of bones and bone fragments of tritylodontid mammaliaforms, herbivorous mammal-like creatures that lived some 180 million years ago. The fossils are rare in the Navajo Sandstone. The discovery helps scientists understand the fossil history of the changing Lake Powell shoreline, the park service said. 

The area where scientists found the fossils had been underwater and only exposed because “the paleontologists were in the right place at the right time before annual snowmelt filled the lake,” the park service said. The scientists had to race to recover the fossils in about 120 days. 

Another rare bonebed was discovered in the Kayenta Formation, the park service said. 

The rocks encasing the fossils will be scanned with X-ray computerized tomography at the University of Utah South Jordan Health Center before being studied at St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, the park service said. The fossils will be housed at the Prehistoric Museum in Price. 

“Studying these fossils will help paleontologists learn more about how early mammal relatives survived the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period and diversified through the Jurassic Period,” the park service said.