Along with two of his friends, Hector Lee, a student from Fillmore, Utah, discovered a camel skull in a cave in the lava beds of nearby Meadow Hot Springs in 1928. He passed it along to professor A.L. Matthews of the University of Utah, who then sent it to the paleontologist Alfred Romer at the University of Chicago. The skull apparently had muscle tissue still attached to it, indicating a relatively recent provenance. Romer noted “the most obvious explanation” was that the skull was a remnant of the 1856–1866 US Camel Corps, a government experiment in using camels to service military forts and survey expeditions. Comparison with contemporary Bactrian and dromedary skulls, however, revealed this specimen was of an entirely different species: the Camelops hesternus, which had been thought to have gone extinct half a million years ago. Romer determined this find refuted the theory of such an early period of extinction for two reasons. First, the persistence of muscle on the bone could only be credible after several thousand years at the most, not half a million. Second, he drew on an 1890 geological study by G.K. Gilbert to determine that the cave in which the skull was found formed only after the fourth glaciation period, around 15,000 years ago. Romer excitedly suggested the timeline for extinction needed revision. Dr. Oliver P. Hay, who had established the previously-held early Pleistocene extinction date for C. hesternus, witheringly denounced Romer’s suggestions in an article published six months later. He contended ancient fossils could maintain muscle tissue for more than a few thousand years given the right conditions. He furthermore argued G.K. Gilbert was not aware of the multiple glacial stages that subsequent science had identified, and thus was not credible. He sardonically requested geologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists present more cogent arguments against his original theory. The question of the dating of this camel skull did, in fact, involve the anthropological field. When species such as the Camelops had been confined to the early Pleistocene, the incidence of human remains in association with them had indicated to scientists that humans must have existed at the same early time. To find that this species and others like it could have existed far later would deprive anthropology of one argument for a quite early date for human existence on the continent. Other articles in the Science journal where this debate played out confirm that other geologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists did take up Hay’s challenge and Romer’s invitation to determine whether previously-held extinction dates remained legitimate for dating the human record. The May 9, 1930 edition of Park City’s Park Record noted Hector Lee, the original skull-discoverer, helped to establish the Camelops hesternus extinction date to 25,000 years ago. Eventually, in the late 1970s, paleontologists at the University of Utah used radiocarbon technology to date the skull to about 11,000 years ago, redeeming both Romer and his revised extinction date for Camelops hesternus.

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In the 1850s U.S. Army Lieutenant Amiel Whipple passed through the Painted Desert while surveying a route along the 35th Parallel. Impressed by the deposits of petrified wood, Whipple documented the finding, recording the first published account of the Petrified Forest. Thereafter, pioneers, sightseers, and scientists travelled to the region to collect samples of the petrified wood. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established Petrified Forest National Monument, and in 1932 President Herbert Hoover added over 53,000 acres to the monument. The creation of Route 66 in 1926 brought motorists to the north end of the monument where entrepreneurs had built a trading post; at the south end there was a store. In response to the visitor boom at the end of World War II, the Eisenhower administration funded the ten-year Mission 66 program aimed at upgrading National Parks facilities and functions.  The Petrified Forest National Monument began planning for a new park headquarters in 1956 which was planned to include a new visitor center, administrative buildings, and residential housing. Park Service architects started drafting designs for a modern administrative building. In 1958 the Park Service contracted architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander to help design the new feature. They envisioned an urban hub with flat-roofed steel and glass buildings. It would be called the Painted Desert Visitor Center. Construction on a new site allowed for infrastructure growth and improvements throughout the park. However, the Park Service experienced a severe budget cut in 1959–1960 which forced delays on all Park contracts, including roads, utilities, and buildings. In 1959, Park Service Director Conrad Wirth reported that all park planning documents should be completed and stored away until funding arrived. In January of 1961 construction began and was officially completed in April of 1963. In December 1962, during construction, Congress recognized the Petrified Forest as the 31^st National Park. The design of the Painted Desert Visitor Center featured bright white concrete, aluminum beams, and floor-to-wall glass windows that allowed for visitors to see inside. The residential housing located on the second floor highlighted a long continuous window which brought light into the apartments and provided a view of the yard. The facility has undergone multiple renovations which have altered its exterior design aesthetically, though its layout remains relatively unchanged. In the 1970s Park officials started noticing faults in the building's construction which needed repairs to maintain safety. Renovations took place over the next few years and altered the outer appearance, including new paint in a red-brown palette which better blended the building into its surrounding environment. Conservation efforts have allowed the Petrified Forest National Park administrative point to remain open to the public every day.

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In 1909, Earl Douglass, a paleontologist from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, discovered a site riddled with fossilized dinosaur bones in the northeastern corner of Utah and created a camp where he began excavating remains. In the following six years Douglass sent over 700,000 pounds of fossilized bones, including full skeletons, to museums throughout the country. The discoveries caught the attention of President Woodrow Wilson, who proclaimed the site Dinosaur National Monument in 1915. Douglass began envisioning a museum which would display excavation sites in their original state, and in the 1920s planning for a structure over the quarry began. However, funding insufficiencies delayed building such a museum for the next three decades. Finally, in the mid 1950s, the Eisenhower administration funded a ten-year program to upgrade the National Parks system in response to the huge visitor boom after World War II. The program was part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Park Service that would occur in 1966, and it come to be known as Mission 66. By May of 1955 the Park Service produced preliminary plans, and a push for funding the project took place. March 1956 saw the announcement of new financing that covered roads, water, housing, and an information point. By May, the Park Service provided the first sketches of the new building. The National Park Service contracted the Anshen and Allen architectural firm from California in 1956 to design the Quarry Visitor Center, and in July Anshen and Allen provided the first seven-page document of preliminary sketches. Included in the sketches was a study of the sun’s movement throughout the year which was imperative to a glass building with sharp angles. However, Park Service Director Conrad Wirth denied the proposal due to budget constraints. After further negotiation, Park Service and Anshen and Allen agreed on plans for the Quarry Visitor Center, and construction began in early 1957. In May 1958, the R. K. McCullough Construction Company of Salt Lake City completed construction at the quarry site, and in June the center opened to the public.  Today the Quarry Visitor Center remains mostly in its original state. Despite some structural renovation in the 1960s due to shifting soil under the foundation, the aesthetic qualities of the building have been untouched. As visitors enter the courtyard there are restrooms and a covered patio, and an “oasis porch” of shaded space with benches. To the left is the entrance to the lobby where small exhibits share a space with the information desk and shop. To the right is the auditorium which is used to show the orientation movie. The building includes laboratory facilities, a research library, storage, and a dark room. The museum still features many of its original exhibit panels and displays with the addition of a few new ones over the years. The second-floor viewing deck remains open to visitors to explore the quarry site that has been incorporated into the building. Even though excavations are no longer taking place inside the museum, paleontologists left behind their tools, allowing visitors to reminisce on times now past.

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Dubbed “America’s Aquarium in Stone” by the National Park Service, Fossil Butte is exceptional because it has many well-preserved fossils, especially those of aquatic animals. It is considered by researchers to be one of the richest paleontology sites on earth. Paleontologists have recovered fossils of crustaceans, gars, stingrays, plankton, crocodiles, turtles, bivalves, and birds, among many others, preserved for 56 to 34 million years. Fossil Butte used to be the smallest of three prehistoric lakes from the Eocene Epoch in what is now southwest Wyoming, northeast Utah, and northwest Colorado, collectively known as the Green River Lake System. The bottom of the lake is thought to have contained hydrogen sulfide, which is poisonous, which prevented fish from scavenging off of the lake bottom. When an animal in the lake died, it sank to the bottom of the lakebed and remained undisturbed, eventually to be covered and preserved beneath the mud. Fossil Butte is also famous for fossils of mass mortalities, where many fish all died at the same time and became fossilized next to each other. This could be caused by a variety of factors like seasonal changes in water salinity or PH. It is likely as well that the hydrogen sulfide became disturbed from time to time and caused poisonings. Though some explorers like Ferdinand V. Hayden and John C Frémont already knew about the fossil beds in this area, the full extent of Fossil Butte’s paleontological significance wasn’t understood until the late 1860s. The Union Pacific Railroad’s construction passed through the formation, and railroad workers showed fossils to paleontologists. One collector, Robert Craig, began quarrying fossils there in 1897. The site gained interest from museums around the world for its richness in high-quality fossils. As a result of this fame, Congress created the Fossil Butte National Monument in 1972 to preserve some of it for public viewing. The visitor center of the Fossil Butte National Monument Visitor Center has over eighty fossils on display of various types of prehistoric aquatic creatures, as well as a variety of prehistoric bats, birds, plants, and insects. The center shows a thirteen-minute video to inform visitors about the discoveries paleontologists have made within the site. Visitors are allowed to make their own “fossil imprints” as souvenirs and access an educational computer program about fossils and the natural history of the monument.

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Dinosaur Ridge is a fossil site in the Morrison Formation and Cretaceous Dakota Formation, west of Denver, Colorado. Othniel Charles Marsh, professor of Paleontology at Yale College, and Arthur Lakes, a geologist and paleontologist, began excavation of the site in 1877. They discovered fossilized bones from many famous dinosaurs like Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and Stegosaurus. As the dig site became more popular, more and more people started bulldozing the land to uncover fossils to sell. To protect the ecosystem and to commemorate its significance as a fossil site, the National Park Service designated it the Morrison Fossil Area National Natural Landmark in 1973.  Othniel Charles March and Arthur Lakes first discovered the fossils in the Morrison Formation, on the west side of the area. Many quarries all over the site were subsequently opened by other paleontologists following this discovery. On the east side of Dinosaur Ridge, spreading across the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin is the Cretaceous Dakota Formation. This part became famous in 1937 when construction workers building the Alameda Parkway uncovered hundreds of footprints. These dinosaur footprints are more difficult to identify than fossilized bones, but scientists believe these came from something similar to an Iguanadon, along with an unidentified type of predatory theropod. Dinosaur Ridge is massive in size and hosts a diverse and interesting amount of rare fossil phenomena like these footprints.  Dinosaur Ridge is open to guests and has a museum, dinosaur track site, quarry, gift shop, and hiking trail. The Dinosaur Ridge Exhibit Hall has information about its excavation history and the types of fossils paleontologists have found there. The hiking trails have signs and markers with information about many geologic and paleontological features visitors can explore, like a volcanic ash bed, where a white layer between shale and sandstone between other rock layers can be observed (signifying the presence of volcanic ash at the time), and a trace fossil site, where fossils of marine plants and animals appear as irregularities in the rock. It even

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Earl Douglass was a paleontologist working at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1909, Douglass traveled to Utah to look for dinosaur fossils. Years before, he had nearly completed an entire Diplodocus skeleton from Wyoming. The Pennsylvania public loved it, so he was eager to find more fossils for Carnegie Museum. He and his workers excavated thousands of dinosaur fossils at Dinosaur National Monument beginning in 1909 while doing work for the museum. The site near Vernal, Utah, quickly gained worldwide renown for its paleontological research potential. President Woodrow Wilson established the fossil beds as a national monument in 1915. Besides dinosaurs, the site shows culture from past civilizations. Prior to the fourteenth-century, the Fremont people inhabited the region. They left ceramic artifacts, petroglyphs, and pictographs which visitors today can still see. The Wall of Bones is perhaps the most interesting feature of Dinosaur National Monument. It is a cliff wall with more than 1,500 dinosaur fossils from the late Jurassic period still embedded in the rock. Guests are even permitted to touch the fossils themselves. Another feature is the Quarry Exhibit Hall, the location where Douglass first discovered multiple fossils in 1909. It has fossils, footprints, and exceptionally rare specimens like a fossilized juvenile Stegosaurus. Dinosaur National Monument provides ample opportunity for sightseeing and recreation. Adventure-seekers can whitewater raft down the Green River and see the towering landmark Steamboat Rock while they appreciate the scenery of the canyons and valleys. They can choose private or commercial rafting trips, which can be as short as a day or as long as a week. Dinosaur National Monument was also made into an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association. This limits light pollution to allow for better star-gazing. Visitors can camp at one of six different campgrounds, or choose to explore the wilderness to find their own camp site. Dinosaur National Monument contains many miles of hiking trails along rivers, through canyons, and across vast expanses. Picnic areas are available throughout the monument, as well as at the Quarry Visitor Center, Canyon Visitor Center, and the Josie Morris Ranch.

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During the Triassic Period, northeastern Arizona’s Colorado Plateau was near the equator on part of the prehistoric supercontinent Pangea. Due to the different climate, there existed massive trees and rivers all over the area. Some trees fell into the surrounding floodplains, or rivers, and were buried in mud, becoming petrified over time. The process of petrification is where the cellular structure of organic materials is replaced by minerals. The most common of these minerals are quartz, manganese oxide, and iron oxide, and each give petrified wood different colors. There are fossils of three different extinct tree species in the park: Woodworthia, Schilderia, and Araucarioxylon. Millions of years later, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the region a national monument. Congress passed legislation in 1962 to make it a national park, calling it Petrified Forest National Park, and in 2004 to expand the park’s boundaries further in order to protect more of the area from fossil thieves and better preserve the environment. Today, the park spans 221,390 acres, with over 50,000 acres of designated wilderness where the National Park Service allows recreational activities like camping and backpacking. Visitors can get information and backcountry permits at the Painted Desert Visitor Center, which also hosts an orientation film, bookstore, restaurant, walking trail, and some hands-on exhibits. The Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark is two miles from the north entrance of the park and hosts museum galleries, visitor information, sweeping desert vistas, and access to the Wilderness Area and other trails. Rainbow Forest Museum is another park attraction similar to the visitor center, but it is more focused on museum exhibition. It doesn’t have a restaurant but does host complete paleontological exhibits with prehistoric animal skeletons. Although Petrified Forest National Park is most immediately known for fossil remains, the region continues to be home for a wide variety of native wildlife. There are hundreds of animal species in its ecosystem, including tiger salamander, toad, porcupine, coyote, bat, Kit Fox, pronghorn, snake, woodrat, box turtle, and golden eagle. Many unusual migratory species like pelican and other shore birds occasionally can be seen in the park. The majority of the wildlife is crepuscular, meaning that they are most active at dawn and dusk. The park recommends visiting in the early morning or evening hours for a much better chance of observing wildlife. The park also has over 800 archeological and historic sites exhibiting at least 12,000 years of human presence. There are petroglyph sites ranging in age from 600 to 2000 years ago. The earliest types of artifacts found at the park are stone spear points and arrowheads crafted by Paleoindians, the first people to have traveled to the region who arrived during the Pleistocene period at least 11,500 years ago. These earliest people were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Eventually, people began permanently inhabiting the area to farm corn. They constructed pit structures and pueblos, and made pottery. Ruins of these later structures and ceramic artifacts can still be seen by visitors at sites throughout the park.

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Thomas Boylan settled in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, sometime in the early 1900s. In 1915, he began searching for dinosaur bones at Como Bluff, a rocky ridge between the towns of Medicine Bow and Rock River known for being abundant with fossils. As early as 1877, professor of paleontology Othniel Charles Marsh employed men to excavate at the ridge. In 1897, The American Museum of Natural History found numerous fossils of sauropods. Dinosaur species that used to inhabit the area included massive herbivores like Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Barosaurus, and Stegosaurus. The climate and diversity of plants in the region provided plenty of sustenance for them. The presence of so many herbivores attracted predators like Ceratosaurus, Ornitholestes, and Allosaurus. Boylan searched for dinosaur bones because he hoped to put together a complete skeleton as a roadside attraction for drawing motorists to his gas station on the Lincoln Highway to get more business. Boylan’s method was unorthodox, but he shared the impulse for roadside attractions with other early-twentieth-century American gas station owners.

Despite so much “dino-diversity,” spending nearly sixteen years excavating dinosaur fossils, and finding 5,796 dinosaur bones, Boylan did not get even close to completing an entire dinosaur skeleton. Like other early twentieth-century American gas station owners, he wanted to build something uniquely eccentric to attract motorists and bring in more business. Like the famous Route 66, Lincoln Highway is known for its many strange roadside attractions, like the Koontz Coffee Pot and the World’s Largest Teapot.

Lacking a complete skeleton, Boylan decided to put the dinosaur fossils he found to a different use: building a small museum out of dinosaur bones. He completed the Fossil Cabin Museum in 1932. Boylan built the cabin like any other tradition brick structure at the time, except he included fossil chunks and fragments among the bricks, sealing them in place with mortar. During the Fossil Cabin’s construction, part of Boylan’s house served as a museum.

The Fossil Cabin was initially very successful as a museum and roadside attraction. The Lincoln Highway was a popular road at the time, and Boylan had no lack of business. Newspapers called it the “world’s oldest” building because of its fossil building material, and the Fossil Cabin even featured in Robert Ripley’s Believe It or Not newspaper.

Boylan operated the Fossil Cabin museum until his death in 1947. His wife, Grace Boylan, continued its operation until 1970. That year, workers completed construction of the US Interstate 80 nearby. Traffic decreased, the gas station went out of business, and the museum lost attention. Grace finally sold the museum in 1974.

The Boylans’ gas station is gone, and except for the Fossil Cabin, the property looks abandoned today. Though the National Park Service added it to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, Fossil Cabin has been closed to the public since 2011. The property is currently for sale, and its future is uncertain. It remains a very unique roadside attraction along the Lincoln Highway, and there’s still a paved area for motorists to park, take pictures, and marvel at the “World’s oldest” building.

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