he town of Vernal, eighty acres of the
exposed Morrison strata were set aside in 1915 as the Dinosaur National
Monument. These acres have already yielded a very large collection of
skeletons. Since 1908 the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh has been
gathering specimens of the greatest importance. The only complete
skeleton of a dinosaur ever found was taken out in 1909. The work of
quarrying and removal is done with the utmost care. The rock is
chiselled away in thin layers, as no one can tell when an invaluable
relic may be found. As fast as bones are detached, they are covered with
plaster of Paris and so wrapped that breakage becomes impossible. Two
years were required to unearth the skeleton of a brontosaurus.

The extraordinary massing of fossil remains at this point suggests that
floods may have swept these animals from a large area and lodged their
bodies here, where they were covered with sands. But it also is possible
that this spot was merely a favorite feeding-ground. It may be that
similarly rich deposits lie hidden in many places in the wide-spread
Morrison sandstone which some day may be unearthed. The bones of
dinosaurs have been found in the Morrison of Colorado near Boulder.

PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT

For a hundred and twenty-five or thirty miles southwest of the Grand
Canyon, the valley of the Little Colorado River is known as the Painted
Desert. It is a narrow plain of Carboniferous and Triassic marls,
shales, sandstones, and conglomerates, abounding in fossils, the most
arid part of Arizona; even the river's lower reaches dry up for a part
of each year. But it is a palette of brilliant colors; it will be
difficult to name a tint or shade which is not vividly represented in
this gaudy floor and in the strata of the cliffs which define its
northern and eastern limits. Above and beyond these cliffs lies that
other amazing desert, the Navajo country, the land of the Rainbow Bridge
and the Canyon de Chelly.

I have mentioned the Painted Desert because it is shaped like a long
narrow finger pointed straight at the Petrified Forests lying just
beyond its touch. Here the country is also highly colored, but very
differently. Maroon and tawny yellow are the prevailing tints of the
marls, red and brown the colors of the sandstones. There is a rolling
sandy floor crisscrossed with canyons in whose bottoms grow stunted
cedars and occasional cottonwoods. Upon this floor thousands of
petrified logs are