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Information for Preparation
The St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, St. George, Utah
Website: http://www.dinotrax.com
The dinosaur tracks and other fossils featured at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm were discovered completely by chance. In February 2000, Dr. Sheldon Johnson (a retired optometrist) was leveling a hill on his property, when one of the large blocks he was removing fell away from his equipment and turned over. On the underside of the block were casts of dinosaur tracks.
Six years later, a museum has been built to cover the large, exposed track surface and several blocks, containing over 2000 dinosaur tracks, as well as thousands of specimens of invertebrate traces, plants, invertebrates, fish, reptile, and dinosaur remains. The facility also includes a small prep lab, overseen by Andrew R.C. Milner, St. George City Paleontologist, and managed by Sarah Z. Spears, a recent graduate of Southern Utah University (SUU). Students from SUU, UNLV, Dixie State College, and other schools, as well as nearly one hundred members of Utah Friends of Paleontology (UFOP Southwest Chapter, the largest chapter in Utah), have volunteered their time in the prep lab to help make the museum what it is today.
Most of the work done in the prep lab is on ichnofossils, including Eubrontes, Grallator, Batrachopus, and Anomoepus tracks, to name a few. Work is also increasing under the microscope, as more small-scale fossils of fish, hybodont sharks, and invertebrates are being unearthed in nearby Freeman Quarry, just across the street from the museum. Thousands of bones requiring micro-preparation have thus far been collected from Freeman Quarry. Many UFOP volunteers are currently learning micro-preparation techniques by cleaning fish fossils, mostly semionotids and palaeoniscoids, collected from Lisbon Valley, San Juan County, Utah, that will eventually be housed in the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City once preparation and research on them is completed. Tylor Birthisel, an undergraduate from UNLV, is currently repairing a stromatolite bed for display in the museum.
Equipment used in this laboratory include two Microjack #2's, 2 ME-9100's, each with 1.5" stylus (one chisel and one point tip), and three new microscopes (two SZ65 stereozoom microscopes, and one SZ66 trinocular stereozoom microscope, all on boom stands for convenient prepping of larger blocks). A new fume hood has been donated to the tracksite, but the prep lab has no ventilation or dust system installed as of yet, so it will be a while before we can begin acid preparation. The prep lab is a viewable area to tracksite visitors and part of the exhibit area. The City of St. George is currently looking to add more exhibit and storage space in order to accommodate valuable track blocks (including rare swim track blocks) that are currently located outside the museum with wooden boxes covering them. Tracksite staff and community partners are currently researching additional funding to expand our storage and exhibition areas.
Most of the work done in the prep lab is on ichnofossils, including Eubrontes, Grallator, Batrachopus, and Anomoepus tracks, to name a few. Work is also increasing under the microscope, as more small-scale fossils of fish, hybodont sharks, and invertebrates are being unearthed in nearby Freeman Quarry, just across the street from the museum. Thousands of bones requiring micro-preparation have thus far been collected from Freeman Quarry. Many UFOP volunteers are currently learning micro-preparation techniques by cleaning fish fossils, mostly semionotids and palaeoniscoids, collected from Lisbon Valley, San Juan County, Utah, that will eventually be housed in the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City once preparation and research on them is completed. Tylor Birthisel, an undergraduate from UNLV, is currently repairing a stromatolite bed for display in the museum.
Equipment used in this laboratory include two Microjack #2's, 2 ME-9100's, each with 1.5" stylus (one chisel and one point tip), and three new microscopes (two SZ65 stereozoom microscopes, and one SZ66 trinocular stereozoom microscope, all on boom stands for convenient prepping of larger blocks). A new fume hood has been donated to the tracksite, but the prep lab has no ventilation or dust system installed as of yet, so it will be a while before we can begin acid preparation. The prep lab is a viewable area to tracksite visitors and part of the exhibit area. The City of St. George is currently looking to add more exhibit and storage space in order to accommodate valuable track blocks (including rare swim track blocks) that are currently located outside the museum with wooden boxes covering them. Tracksite staff and community partners are currently researching additional funding to expand our storage and exhibition areas.