Ancient Sites, Modern Awe : On dinosaur trail, crowds thrill to finds of fossil fields, museums

Not many of us can say we make a living in dinosaurs. But even Sue Ann Bilbey--a geologist-paleontologist who heads a Utah dinosaur museum--got a thrill out of Steven Spielberg’s recent “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.” “I got to see a Pteranodon fly and land,” she says excitedly.

The film may spark a new outbreak of “dinomania,” which swept the country in 1993 when Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” debuted. There may well be a summer rush, as there was that year, to real-life dinosaur parks, quarries, museums and other fossil sites, by folks eager to learn more about the prehistoric creatures.

At Dinosaur National Monument, on the Colorado-Utah border, “our visitor count went up 125%,” recalls curator David Whitman. “And we’re kind of expecting it again.” Set in a high desert canyon land cut by rivers of white-water rapids, the 211,000-acre park protects one of the world’s largest repositories of dinosaur bones dating back to the Jurassic period 135 million years ago.

Indeed, tracing the trail of dinosaurs in America has become a popular family vacation choice in recent years. Roots & Wings Excursions, a Herndon, Va., travel firm, has put together a weeklong family tour in late July to Dinosaur Country, and at least two sites of dinosaur digs are inviting travelers to join in the search for bones or bone fragments. You might even be the one who uncovers the bones of a hitherto unknown type of dinosaur, as professionals continue to do.

“Kids love dinosaurs,” says Bilbey, who is acting director of the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park in Vernal, which is just 20 miles from Dinosaur National Monument. “It’s the monster concept. They look mean and ornery, but they’re dead and gone.”

In the Dinosaur Garden at Utah Field House, 18 life-size dinosaurs modeled in fiberglass give visitors a chance to compare the monsters. The latest addition, which arrived last month, is a replica of the newly discovered Utahraptor, a 17-foot-long meat-eater displaying, as Bilbey describes it, a “horrendous” claw and big teeth. “It’s something that nightmares are made of.” In “Jurassic Park,” a similar raptor was a villain.

For the most part, the dinosaur trail in America leads to the Rocky Mountains--particularly to Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. These states, and others, are traced by the Morrison Formation, a massive layer of rock that has been the source of major dinosaur finds. But natural history museums throughout the country, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, also offer important dinosaur exhibits.

If “The Lost World,” a fantasy about dinosaurs, has piqued your curiosity about the real thing, here are a few of the many ways and places to learn more about dinosaurs and about other prehistoric fossil life.

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center & Dig Sites in Thermopolis ([307] 864-2997) invites visitors to join in supervised digs--expect to be sifting soil on your hands and knees--or to watch paleontologists at work. The center operates a dinosaur museum in Thermopolis, but the Dig-for-a-Day site--or “bone bed”--is a 15-minute van ride into a remote area of low mountains. Apparently, this high desert cattle-grazing land once was a feeding place for meat-eating dinosaurs, who left behind the gnarled and scattered remains of their prey.

Only 10 participants a day are accepted on the supervised dig-for-a-day, so reservations are advised. The midsummer fee is $100 per person or $250 for a family of four. Or take a dig-site and museum tour: $14.50 for adults and $9 for children ages 5 to 14, seniors 60 and older, students and veterans. Kids under 5 are free. Kids’ Digs, a special series of two-day digs for youngsters ages 8 to 13, is scheduled for Aug. 12 and 13. The cost is $40 per child, which includes lunch.

The Dinamation International Society in Fruita, Colo. ([800] 344-3466), introduces small groups of vacationers to the science of fossil hunting at its Colorado quarries and in Mexico, Argentina and Mongolia. The society also operates the Devils Canyon Science and Learning Center in Fruita, which features displays of robotic dinosaurs, mounted skeletons and a working dinosaur laboratory. And you can feel the earth move beneath your feet in a simulated earthquake demonstration.

The five-day Colorado study and quarry excavation program costs $875 per person (double occupancy), which includes lodgings in nearby Grand Junction and some meals. Dates are Aug. 2 and Aug. 16. Special five-day family programs are scheduled July 26 and Aug. 9. The price is $850 for adults and $575 for children ages 6 to 12.

Roots & Wings Excursions of Herndon ([800] 722-9005 or [703] 834-7244) offers families a rare opportunity to join a weeklong escorted tour into Dinosaur Country. This year’s dig, July 26 to Aug. 2, is full, but another is planned for next summer. Along with visits to dinosaur museums and quarries, the Dino Digs tour features a half-day dig under the auspices of the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction, a small city with numerous dinosaur-related attractions.

Also on the itinerary are a stop at the Devils Canyon Science and Learning Center, a scenic interlude in Moab, Utah (at nearby Arches and Canyonlands national parks), and a warm soak in the mammoth hot springs pool in Glenwood Springs, Colo. The price is $1,499 for adults and $999 for children 16 and under. This rate includes lodgings, most meals and a Canyonlands Jeep and jet-boat tour. Air fare to Denver is additional.

Comanche National Grassland in southeastern Colorado ([719] 384-2181) invites hardy vacationers to hike 10.5 miles (round trip) into the Picket Wire Canyonlands, where about 1,300 visible dinosaur tracks can be viewed along a quarter-mile trail. It is considered the longest documented track site in the world, according to Deb Dandridge, archeologist for the U.S. Forest Service facility southeast of La Junta.

The hiking trail is an old pasture road (now closed to vehicles), so the route is not difficult. But summer temperatures in the Purgatoire Valley where the tracks are located can climb to more than 110 degrees, making the walk formidable.

“Expect a wilderness experience,” says Dandridge, who warns that hikers “are on their own” if they get into difficulty.

For nonhikers, six-hour escorted auto tours to the tracks are scheduled Saturdays at 8 a.m. in September and October.

However, this year’s excursions already are booked full. Applications for 1998 will be taken beginning in January; usually all tours are filled by April. Participants must provide their own four-wheel drive vehicle.

Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border ([970] 374-3000) is, as its name implies, a primary dinosaur study site. Visitors to the park’s Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center near Vernal can see laboratory work in progress and hear a ranger outline the history of digs and discoveries at the quarry. One wall of the mostly glass visitor center is tilted to provide a view of hundreds of partially excavated dinosaur bones.

The Utah Field House of Natural History State Park in Vernal ([801] 789-3799) complements the exhibits at Dinosaur National Monument. Its Dinosaur Garden, where 18 full-size replicas stand in lifelike poses, puts realistic flesh on the bones displayed in the national parkland.

Dakota Dinosaur Museum in Dickinsn, N.D. ([701] 225-3466), displays a varied collection of fossil finds, including the bones of 10 dinosaurs.

The star of the show is a Triceratops horridus, a triple-horned, plant-eating dinosaur that looks like a giant lizard. The skeleton is one of the most complete found anywhere on a single site. It was uncovered in neighboring Montana in 1992.

George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden, Utah ([801] 393-3466), is an outdoor museum, where visitors walk a trail lined by an array of cement and fiberglass dinosaur replicas. Nearby is a playground with more replicas, which youngsters are invited to climb.

Universal Studios Hollywood in Universal City, Calif. ([818] 622-3801), is home to Jurassic Park-the Ride, which debuted last summer. The premise--modern-day dinosaurs in an attack mode--is pure fantasy, but the robotic dinosaurs reportedly are frighteningly realistic.

Aboard rafts, riders make an 84-foot plunge down one of the fastest, steepest water descents ever built. Within a tropical habitat, they then encounter five-story-tall dinosaurs, including a Tyrannosaurus rex that is stalking them.

These creatures are computer-programmed, say theme park officials, to lunge at riders with “the quickness of a striking venomous rattlesnake.” Less-adventurous visitors can settle for a back lot tram tour of sets used to film “The Lost World.”