Mesozoic Gardens and Monkey Puzzle Trees

New to the museum, and the first of its kind, is an exhibit containing living creatures and fossils. It gives a glimpse of the wonder that the proposed Mesozoic Gardens could hold.

A Miniature Mesozoic Gardens

Today Southeast Utah is a desert, a boon to paleontologists since finding dinosaur fossils is much easier without all of the surface greenery, but it wasn’t always this way. In the Cretaceous Period, thick vegetation was especially lush along the coasts of a warm inland sea. This provided the material that would eventually form the coal-beds of present day Carbon and Emery Counties. In Utah nearly all of these plants died out along with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago. Some descendant plants, which survive today in the Southern Hemisphere, have been collected here to reconstruct, on a small scale, the ecology thriving in this area during the Cretaceous.

The Mesozoic Gardens display is a taste of our plan to develop the half-acre Mesozoic Garden, with hundreds of species of these living fossils. Strange plants, large trees of the ancient forests, and a diversity of animals will provide a living reconstruction where visitors can walk among the ecology of the age of dinosaurs.

Living Fossils

Direct descendants of species found in the fossil record that show little or no change from their ancestors, called ‘living fossils,’ represent remarkable designs able to make a living through many changes on Earth. Each of the animals and plants in the exhibit are evolutionary success stories, persisting through incredibly long timespans and many ecological overhauls to survive today.

Alligator

Alligator mississippiensis
The species of alligator in the exhibit is the only alligator species living today in the United States. However, several species in the family Alligatoridae were common all over North America in the Cretaceous, including the modestly sized 18-20 foot long Leidyosuchus and the monstrous 35 - 50 foot long Deinosuchus.
After dinosaurs died out, alligators and other kinds of crocodile were top predators in the fossil world.

Soft-shelled Turtle

Trionyx and Apalone
Seldom star attractions in dinosaur exhibits, soft-shelled turtles are actually very abundant in aquatic deposits of Cretaceous age, indicating their great success in the dinosaur ecology.
The living North American examples seen in this exhibit include the spiny soft-shell Apalone spinifera and the larger Florida soft-shell Apalone ferox, whose species name translates to ‘ferocious’.

Second Soft-Shelled Turtle "sunning" himself

YES, we have two!

Another Living Addition
Monkey Puzzle Trees

New to the Hall of Dinosaurs are two Monkey Puzzle Trees
Araucaria araucana

Family Araucariaceae South America

The family Araucariaceae is an exotic group of ‘living fossil’ trees with a long history.
Araucarians are actually conifer trees, related to modern pines, originating after a major extinction event over 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period - long before the flowering trees in forests today. The ancient super-continent Pangaea allowed these conifers to spread around the world by the Jurassic Period.
Araucarian trees were less abundant on northern continents by the time of the Morrison Formation, when Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaurs flourished, and they became extinct in North America at the end of the Cretaceous.
The ‘Monkey Puzzle’ is one of 19 living species surviving in the Southern Hemisphere countries of Brazil, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and New Caledonia. Their common name comes from the prickly branches that would make it hard for a monkey to climb.

Writing by Jeff Bartlett

Stop by the museum today 155 East 100 North – Price, Utah and check out our latest additions
General admission fees apply
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