I caught Jurassic Park on some obscure cable TV channel last night and then stumbled across this great story about the discovery of a ‘Dinosaur Dance Floor’ in the far north of Arizona.
“During the Jurassic period, large stretches of the American west were a desert, so the presence of more than 1,000 tracks of a variety of creatures has led geologists to conclude the site was an oasis.”
Apparently it was only erosion caused by strong winds in the area that uncovered this three-quarter acre site in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and eventually the dinosaur footprints will be blown away.
Vermilion Cliffs became a national monument on 9 November 9 2000 and covers a whopping 294,000 acres. The remote area, in extreme northern Coconino County on the border with the state of Utah, has been described as ‘The Land Before Time‘.
It’s amazing to think that in such a desolate region, human settlement actually dates back 12,000 years and that there are hundreds of Native American pueblos spread across the land plus the largest number of petroglyph ‘rock art’ sites in any protected area in the US.
As it’s maintained by the BLM - not the more glitzy guidebook and gift shop led National Park Service - it’s suggested that this is a place for people to explore by themselves. The 3 main sites are Buckskin Gulch, Lees Ferry and Coyote Buttes, home of ‘The Wave’, a small ravine between eroded sandstone domes only recently made famous.
As only 20 people a day are allowed to visit many of these sights I’d suggest you take a virtual tour instead.
