Cleveland - Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, Price, UT - Scenic Drives, Native American Sites, National Natural Landmark

Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry has taken more than 12,000 individual bones and one dinosaur egg from this abundant fossil bed. As one of the world's foremost dinosaur fossil sources, bones have been taken from the quarry representing over seventy different animals and eleven species. Cast replicas and original skeletons assembled from these bones are on display in over sixty world-wide museums world-wide. The quarry was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966.

The visitor center was recently enlarged and new exhibits made available for the public.

There is a complete Allosaur skeletal reconstruction and a Stegosaur wall mount. At the quarry you can step into a covered building and see bones in the ground while viewing a work in progress. This site is recognized worldwide as the primary source of fossilized bones from the flesh-eating Allosaur.

The quarry is open weekends; Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays (weather permitting) from early in March until Memorial Day, and daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend. The schedule goes back to weekends-only for September and October. Hours are from 10am to 5pm, except on Sundays when the hours are noon to 5pm. To get to the site, take Route 10 south from Price to the Cleveland/Elmo turnoff. Look for the "dinosaur" signs at road intersections. The quarry is located thirty miles south of Price, Utah, at the end of a graded road. This site is a federal government "Fee Demonstration Project" sites. There is an entrance fee of $5 per adult. Anyone under 16 gets in free. All funds collected stay at the site and are used for operations and improvements.

Scattered throughout the area are room-size boulders which create a unique setting for the exhibit buildings, picnic facilities, and the self-guided Rock Walk Nature Trail. Over the years, many theories have been proposed as to why so many dinosaurs gathered and died in one place. The suggestions have ranged from river or lake deposit to swampy bog, to something involving earthquakes. All have been dismissed by serious scientists.

Two-thirds of the bones uncovered at this site are from Allosaurus, the largest carnivore of the Jurassic period. There are plant-eating Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus and Camptosaurus. In the mid 1970's two previously unknown dinosaurs were identified from bones discovered at this quarry. These small carnivores were known as Stokesosaurus clevelandi and Marshosaurus bicentesimus.

There is a quarry tour that takes you through a real, working archeological dig, complete with dust and cranes. The Rock Walk Nature Trail winds past many sites and include signs along the way that will help you learn about the history that's been unearthed already, as well as all the history still waiting in the ground.

Fodor's Review: "Paleontologists and geologists have excavated more than 15,000 dinosaur bones from the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, making this "predator trap" the densest concentration of Jurassic fossils ever found. Since the quarry's discovery by herders in the 1920s, scores of dinosaur remains have been discovered here, including the oldest fossilized egg. Although many of the bones found in the quarry now reside in museums around the world, a trip to the remote landscape surrounding the quarry pit is worth the journey. The Visitor Center, which generates its own electricity from rooftop solar panels, has a reconstructed dinosaur skeleton and exhibits about the quarry, and the area has some short hiking trails. The center is 15 mi on a gravel road from the nearest services, so bring food and water and dress for desert conditions.''