Random Stuff

I've put in a lot of time recently, even on my "days off", on work related projects - I think I've mentioned (too lazy to go back and look) that I've been shooting a lot of video that is destined for the park's first self-produced video podcast. Most of the shooting is done - just a few seconds of my mug on screen is all that is left in that regard - then a little additional editing, and that project will be complete. Did I mention it will be about Utah Prairie Dogs?

We also have some other ideas - Glacier NP seems to be something of a leader in this regard, so they're not original ideas - for virtual tours and hikes that I'm working on, too. Problem there is that rather than be video they'll use Flash and, while I have a piece of software that allows me to produce Flash "movies" (like on the opening page of my website), it chokes and crashes badly when I try to do something more complex. So that means that I'm going to have to learn to use the actual Flash program and will be investing a lot of time in that over the next several days.

This past Friday and Saturday was the park's 2nd annual Geology Festival and the guest speakers each night were paleontologists. That was cool stuff! Friday night we had Dr. Alan Titus who is the chief paleontologist for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and he talked about Deinosuchus. What a croc! They found a skull fragment last summer - though known in other places, a first for Utah - and this thing was a monster. The complete head would have been close to 2 meters (6+ feet) and the sockets for the largest teeth were 5 cm (2 inches) at the base (the teeth would have been about 15 cm/6 in. long). Total body length of this creature would be on the order of 10 meters or 33 feet, and it ate dinosaurs for lunch! Here's the other scary part: These crocodiles evolved in the late Cretaceous at a time when there was extensive volcanic activity, high CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and the ice caps melted raising sea levels. Let's hope climate change doesn't cause a repeat in crocodilian evolution.

The other speaker was Jeff Bartlett, Director of Collections and Research at the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum, and the topic was recent findings in Utah. The highlight of his presentation was the fossils he brought with him. In addition to several bones, he brought along a trackway and a coprolite. Last fall I wrote about some of the trackways out in the Grand Staircase (here and here), but the one he brought along had been removed from the bedrock and was amazing in that some poor gar-like fish had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remnants of the fish, in the form of scales, were embedded in this dinosaur's track! I have some coprolites in my collection of fossils - if you remember, coprolites are fossilized "poop" - but nothing like what we saw Saturday night. He showed a photograph of a very large coprolitein the presentation and what he brought was a fragment (measuring about 15 x 10 cm/6 x 4 inches) of this much larger piece - and this thing contained bone fragments! This chunk of fossilized excrement came from a freakin' carnivore that was roaming around (what is now) Utah in the Cretaceous!

At times, avian activity seems to be slowing down some around here. I'm not seeing as many of the migratory breeding species like Western Tanager and, oddly, I haven't seen any of the tanagers with young in tow, either. I did see a Dark-eyed Junco the other day being followed around by a cowbird chick - ugh!