GSA field trips

["King, Norm" <nking.ucs@smtp.usi.edu>]

I'm not getting my e-mail.  Some sort of problem with phone lines, 
apparently.

I had the opportunity to take two interesting field trips in conjunction 
with the recent GSA meeting in Denver.  A pre-meeting trip took me to the 
Four Corners area and plenty of exposures of the Chinle Fm. (home of 
Coelophysis and many "thecodonts") and Kayenta Fm. (home of Dilophosaurus 
and, I think, Scutellosaurus).  We were doing sedimentology and 
stratigraphy, however, not paleontology.  Lots of nice paleosols.  After 
the meeting, another trip took me to the Garden Park dinosaur site near 
Can~on City, CO.  We didn't have time to visit the DMNH Stegosaurus 
quarry, but we did see Marsh's 1880's quarries, including the one that 
produced the "roadkill" stegosaur.  Dan Grenard of the BLM showed photos 
of the DMNH stegosaur quarry while it was being worked, and one could see 
the articulated tail as uncovered, with spikes splayed out to the side 
and pointing slightly toward the rear, just as the new mount is shown in 
DMNH.  The whole animal was preserved lying on its side, but the tail had 
broken away from the rest of the body, and so it was able to come to rest 
in the position mentioned.  By the way, the main part of the Stegosaurus 
body is still in Can~on City, with only the skull and part of the neck (I 
think) in Denver.  I don't know about the tail.  So the new mount in DMNH 
is actually mostly the old Stegosaurus of the DMNH, but with the neck 
ossicles added and new information on the tail spikes, as well as new 
(straight and high) tail position.

Next year the national GSA will be in Salt Lake City.  Some interesting 
field trips are planned for that meeting, as well.  These caught my eye, 
and, if I'm still alive and kicking at that time, I'll be on at least one 
of them: 

1.  Alamo Impact Event and other Late Devonian Events

For you impact officianados, this trip will visit a Late Devonian bolide 
impact site in Nevada, as well as other features such as the only large 
Late Devonian reef in the western U.S.  A deep water site exposing rocks 
deposited across the late Frasnian mass extinction event will also be 
visited.  Of course, this is mainly an invertebrates trip, led by Carl 
Sandberg, John Warme, and Jared Morrow.

2.  50th Anniversary of the Discovery of the Ghost Ranch Coelophysis 
Quarry

This trip will visit three important dinosaur discovery sites: the Dalton 
Well quarry north of Moab, UT in the Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Fm.; 
the type locality north of Monticello, UT of Dystrophaeus viaemalae, the 
oldest North American sauropod; and, of course, the Ghost Ranch quarry in 
northern New Mexico.  Trip leaders will be David Gillette, J. Lynett 
Gillette, Barry Goldstein, and Edwin H. Colbert.  (I think Colbert is 91 
now????)

3.  Lower to Middle Cretaceous Dinosaur Faunas of the Central Colorado 
Plateau: A Key to Understanding 35 Million Years of Tectonics, 
Sedimentology, Evolution and Biogeography

This trip will examine exposures of the Cedar Mountain and Dakota 
Formations including four dinosaur faunas dated at approximately 125, 
110, 100, and 95 Ma.  This sequence supposedly shows the transition from 
North American dinosaur faunas with European affinities to those with 
Asian affinities.  Opportunities for examining fossils collected from 
these faunas will be provided in Price, UT and Grand Junction, CO.  This 
trip will be led by Jim Kirkland, Brooks Britt, and Tim Lawton.

Let's go!

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Norman R. King                                       tel:  (812) 464-1794
Department of Geosciences                            fax:  (812) 464-1960
University of Southern Indiana
8600 University Blvd.
Evansville, IN 47712                      e-mail:  nking.ucs@smtp.usi.edu