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Dr. Johnson had seen
dinosaur tracks in the region, but at first he was confused. The
footprint he saw was visible in both the brittle clay below and also on
the bottom of the sandstone block he had overturned. Experts, including
Utah State Paleontologist, Dr. Jim Kirkland, came to help identify
additional tracks at the site which revealed the extensive trackways
to be found here.
Realizing that these tracks
would be best served if they were maintained for scientific and
educational purposes, Dr. Johnson and his wife, LaVerna, worked to set
aside the land and its fossils. Eventually the Johnsons donated the
tracks that had been found and arranged for the land to be cared for by
the City of St. George. They worked with scientists, local businesses,
and government officials on the local, state, and national level to
create the museum that is here today. They founded the DinosaurAh!Torium
Foundation that continues to preserve this site as a creative learning
environment with hands-on activities that challenge, enlighten, and
entertain the minds of all who come.
The best preserved and
most numerous of the tracks today form the in-place trackway and
exhibits of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm.
Many other fossils, including bones of dinosaurs and fish, shells of
small aquatic animals, and leaves and seeds of plants, have joined the
footprints to enable paleontologists to reconstruct the nearly 200
million year old ecosystem preserved here with unprecedented clarity, an
extreme rarity for rocks of any time period.
Since the initial
discovery, hundreds of thousands of visitors, including paleontologists
from all over the world, have marveled at this unique discovery.
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