By Christa Sadler
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The Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation is a Utah original. The formation was described half a century ago, designated as different from other layers in part because of a perception that it held no dinosaur fossils. Fast forward to 2025, and it turns out this is anything but true. The Cedar Mountain Formation, once overlooked as “drab” and lacking in interesting fossils, has yielded finds that have more than doubled the number of dinosaur taxa in Utah, including the terror of Early Cretaceous Utah Utahraptor; the almost-duck billed dinosaur Eolambia: the fleet-footed ornithomimid Nedcolbertia; the enormous tank-like ankylosaur Gastonia, and the early tyrannosaur Moros. Many of the dinosaurs that have been found in this formation are known from nowhere else in the world.
The Early Cretaceous is a particularly important time in dinosaur history. Massive changes in Earth’s geography and climate set the stage for the appearance of many groups of dinosaurs whose descendants would go on to dominate the landscapes of western North America in the Late Cretaceous. Research in the formation has allowed us to understand the position of our continent relative to Europe and Asia, as well as global climatic events that are reflected in the sediments of southern Utah. A whole cadre of researchers in everything from paleontology to paleoclimatology and geochemistry have used their talents to help us understand the story of our continent at this important time in Earth’s history.
Utah state paleontologist and technical advisor for the book, James Kirkland, has been working in the formation for more than 30 years, along with dozens of other researchers around the globe. Together, they have opened the book on the time period between about 145 and 98 million years ago, when the world had few flowering plants, temperatures were much higher, and southern Utah was the world’s dinosaur frontier.
This beautiful book includes more than 300 color illustrations done by some of the world’s best paleo artists, including six double-page spreads created specifically for this publication by paleoartist James Kuether. It’s not often that a coffee table book doubles as a great informational piece, but this one does!
Softcover
ISBN 978-0-9776983-1-8
220 pages; 11 x 10 format
$39.95 each (Arizona residents add 8.951% tax)
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