Friday - when we finally got to see the Dinosaur part of Dinosaur National Monument!

We've been in and around Dinosaur National Monument for 4 days and finally got to see the dinosaur part of it!

We were greeted at the Visitor's Center by this model...

It was first displayed at the New York World's Fair in 1964-65.

I thought it looked familiar - here's a picture from our visit to the New York World's Fair, probably in 1965 - do you recognize either of these charming children?

There is Mom with us too - from the same 1960s visit to the World's Fair.

Inside the Visitor's Center, there were displays about a lot of things - including this one about prairie dogs. I think of prairie dogs as small ground hogs, which I was taught to despise when growing up on the farm in Virginia. I kind of figured that prairie dogs would be likewise despised by farmers and ranchers in the west. The display did not elaborate on what makes them a "keystone species". Internet search to the rescue: "Prairie Dogs have long been vilified by ranchers and others who believe that they damage the range and take valuable forage away from cattle and other livestock. In fact, prairie dogs are what is known as a keystone species, a species whose very presence contributes to the diversity of life and whose extinction would result in the extinction of species dependant on it." (further information at: https://hubpages.com/animals/prairiedogs)

One of the reasons we wanted to visit Dinosaur National Monument is that Dwayne fondly remembered visiting here when he used to take his son to Yellowstone in the summers. As far as he remembers, they only visited the Dinosaur side of the Monument, and only the place where the dinosaur bones were quarried. Now, there is a separate Visitor's Center, and trams take visitors from the Visitor's Center to the Quarry Exhibit Hall - mainly because there is limited parking at the dinosaur quarry. So, we took the tram to the Quarry Exhibit Hall.

The man who found the initial bones in 1909, Earl Douglass, had a vision for a display of the bones in situ.

Ultimately, that is exactly what was created.

Dwayne was saying as we went through the exhibit that he didn't remember that it had two stories... this display indicated that the Quarry Exhibit Hall that he and David visited had to be torn down and replaced.

We followed signs that directed us to enter at the upper level - the first thing we saw were bones in rock...

More bones in rock...

Looking down from the second level - there was an area on the first floor where you were allowed to touch some of the bones as they are held in rock.

A young scientist being helped by his dad to explore the dinosaur bone!

Looking down the length of the quarry display.

There was a lot of information provided - I will include pictures of some of the displays as they may answer some questions you may have as they were answered by the "experts" who provided the information for the National Park Service. I don't agree with a lot of this "science" as I have found that scientists are often not as true to the scientific method as I might hope that they would be.
For an alternative view, you may want to check out some of these resources:
http://www.icr.org/article/dinosaurs
http://www.icr.org/article/stones-cry-out-what-rocks-fossils-say/
http://www.icr.org/creation-dinosaurs/

We enjoyed our visit to the Quarry Exhibit Hall. I'm glad that they left the bones in the rock for us to see what it looked like as they were being excavated, and I'm glad that they allow some of the bones to be touched by visitors. Dwayne was able to re-see a location that he visited many years ago and re-acquaint himself with what it included.

This was the only part of Dinosaur National Monument that was at all crowded, and it wasn't bad.