2023 Fall Gateway to Canyon Country

This replica of Powell’s wooden boat, the Emma Dean, was used in 1960 movie “Ten Who Dared.”
intra-species roughhousing, so it gives
us important insight into these animals’
behavior. The baby hadrosaur
preserves delicate details of soft tissue,
such as skin and muscles, providing
important information about these
animals’ anatomy.”
The museum’s ceratopsian display
is good example of the care and precautions
taken to excavate fossils.
“You can see how much goes into
having to remove it from the ground,”
Boston said. “So they have to go in
and dig underneath it to a point so
that they can start forming this cast
around it. And that jacket helps them
get it up and out of the ground, where
they can take it to the lab, and they
can do the more finite detail of revealing
the fossil. But if you’re having
to do all of this digging under, of
course, you can’t really see what’s under
it, and you could unwittingly re-
22 Gateway to Canyon Country
move some parts of that otherwise
would be very valuable information.
There’s a good deal of it that also has
to be removed above and further back
from it. There’s a whole shelf of land
that they usually have to take out from
these fossils to make sure that there’s
not a landslide that destroys the fossil
mid dig.”
Boston said her favorite dinosaur is
the Diabloceratops eatoni, or Eaton’s
Devil Horn Face, named after Jeffrey
Eaton, a paleontologist at Weber State
University. Diabloceratops is a mishmash
of Spanish and Latinized Greek
meaning devil with horned face.
“Diabloceratops is just one of many
types of ceratopsians, and what makes
the Diabloceratops different than your
standard triceratops is it’s part of a
class of Ceratopians that have four
horns instead of three,” Boston said.
In addition to the new dinosaur exhibit,
visitors can learn about the extraordinary
history of Page. Exhibits
include a collection of large aerial
images from 1960 through 1997.
The panels begin with the Glen Canyon
Bridge, then the dam, then Page’s
growth through the years.
“Construction of the bridge was
1957, 1958. It was completed in January
1959,” Campbell said. “Construction
of the dam was 1960 through
1963. It was completed in June of
’63.”
One of the most striking museum
exhibits is the huge 3D Topographic
Relief Map of Glen Canyon National
Recreation Area. Robert S. Miller
hand-carved and painted Isocyanate
foam representing 6,400,000 acres.
Using dental tools, he spent 1,952
hours on the carving alone. Painting
the details with 78 shades of color
took 698 hours. He used topograph-