Stay turned for an updated age for the Huntington mammoth using the latest and greatest techniques! (4/4)

#FossilFriday

If the bone preserves enough collagen, it is a good candidate for carbon dating! A small piece of the bone (in this case, a fragmentary rib from the Huntington Mammoth) is cut off using a dremel, weighed, and taken to her collaborator’s lab for analysis. (3/4)

Her process includes pre-screening the fossils using infrared spectroscopy, where she’s essentially using light to look for collagen preservation in the bone. (2/4)

New science on the Huntington Mammoth for #FossilFriday!

Yesterday, Dr. Christina Ryder visited our museum to sample fossils for carbon dating. Dr. Ryder and her collaborators are interested in the extinction of Ice Age megafauna in North America, including critters like mammoths & mastodons. (1/4)

The science behind Walking With Dinosaurs!

Curator on our excavations at the largest ankylosaur bonebed this week at Science Thursday. You’ll learn about discoveries that weren’t featured in last year’s BBC/PBS documentary including some that are rewriting the books on armored dinosaur biology!

The Prehistoric Museum would like to invite you to submit work to the 2025 Castle Country Community Art Show, in our Special Exhibits Gallery, Nov 14, 2025 - March 15, 2026. We will be accepting your work November 6-9, 2025, during regular museum hours.

A Gastonia-themed Fossil Fest comes to the Prehistoric Museum November 15!

FREE admission all day (9 am - 7 pm)
Museum collections tours (10 am & 1 pm)
Activities/crafts for all ages (11 am - 2 pm)
Up-close looks at the stars of Walking With Dinosaurs: Gastonia and Utahraptor (11 am - 2 pm)

Join us on Nov 11 at 7:30 PM for a FREE screening of Walking with Dinosaurs at the King Koal Theatre in Price, UT!

Follow the Prehistoric Museum & our excavation of Gastonia & raptor fossils. Hang out afterwards for a Q&A w/ our curator, Dr. Joshua Lively, and see fossils excavated during filming.

We are excited to partner with the Price City Youth Council as part of the 3rd Annual Main Street Mash! There will be fun activities across downtown Price, including free admission to the Museum. #Prehistoric #Utah

Herbel helps preserve Nebraska’s legacy, one bone at a time | Nebraska Today A full-circle moment brought Carrie Herbel back to Nebraska to take a position once held by a mentor. The chief preparator at the University of Nebraska State Museum is being honored today for 10…

Great article about former museum preparator Carrie Herbel on her work at the University of Nebraska. If you enjoyed our temporary exhibit, Dippy: The Worlds Oldest Celebrity, you can thank her for her hard work she put in restoring the casts.

news.unl.edu/article/herb...

Bones, Tools, and Treasures Tell Utah’s Ancient Story - Utah State Magazine By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, ’18 M.B.A. The project had bogged down, quite literally, as a patch of thick muck […]

Check out this nice article from the current issue of Utah State Magazine!

utahstatemagazine.usu.edu/culture/bone...

Don't miss this great event happening on campus next week! Larry Martin has done a great job growing the Castle Valley Orchestra from students and community members. Come join them and the Concert and Chamber Choirs for a night of movie soundtrack favorites and more! #USUEastern

Selfie photo of me, in field garb, in front of our newly-erected shade tarps at the "Lorrie's Site" Gastonia quarry out in the eastern Utah desert

MORE CRETACEOUS FIELDWORK! I'm back out in the Cedar Mountain Formation with @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social, digging up dozens of ankylosaurs and streaming each day at 1pm Pacific

Tune in @ twitch.tv/paleontologizing to see what we're finding and ask some questions!

Check out this cool event happening outside the museum tomorrow evening! We will also be offering free admission to the museum during the event.

Stories like this don’t always have a happy ending; resources that are much more fragile have been vandalized beyond repair. When enjoying the landscapes of Utah, please remember to show respect for these resources - paleo & archaeology are irreplaceable parts of our region’s natural heritage!

Thanks to a generous donation from Mike Leschin and the expertise of Go Wash Utah, the surface has been restored to its former glory! #FossilFriday

A story of vandalism with a happy ending for #FossilFriday

A couple of years ago, a sandstone boulder preserving dinosaur tracks in Price Canyon was graffitied. This boulder had fallen out of a nearby cliff and was placed at a popular pullout in the canyon by Utah DOT prior to the vandalism.

Have you seen the Band of Brothers episode of Walking With Dinosaurs yet? Last year it was an absolute pleasure to dig at the site with our University of Birmingham undergraduates - thanks so much to @jlivelypaleo.bsky.social & @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social for an amazing experience!

Walking with Dinosaurs | Band of Brothers | Episode 3 Follow a gang of armored dinosaurs battle to reach adulthood, pursued by ferocious raptors

If you missed us on @pbs.org, you can stream the Band of Brothers episode of #WalkingWithDinosaurs online!
#WWD2025 #FossilFriday

www.pbs.org/video/band-o...

We’re less than 24 hours away from the premiere of our episode of #WalkingWithDinosaurs!

Our excavations of Gastonia and Utahraptor will air Tuesday night at 7 pm on PBS Utah. Check your local listings for show times on your PBS station.

#WWD25

Premiering Sunday, June 8 on BBC One and Tuesday, June 17 on PBS: Utah State University Eastern's Prehistoric Museum @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social is featured in the "Walking with Dinosaurs" series. Tune in to learn more about Gastonia and Utahraptor, & hear from Prehistoric Museum paleontologists!

Join us this coming weekend for this great event! Learn more about the role of the Buffalo Soldiers here in Utah! Registration is required. Register at the link below.

tinyurl.com/bshtregistra...

Ornithopod tracks in place in the Cedar Mountain Formation

Planicoxa from Walking With Dinosaurs

Because this track was made in the boundary between the Yellow Cat & Poison Strip members of the Cedar Mountain Formation, likely candidates include “iguanadontians” like Iguanacolossus, Hippodraco, and Planicoxa.

You can watch us collect this track and more fossils on @pbs.org in two weeks! 2/2

Ornithopod track weathered out of place in the Cedar Mountain Formation

For International #DinosaurDay, here is a large ornithopod track we collected during filming of Walking With Dinosaurs!

Though we can’t tell the species of dinosaur that made a given footprint, we know it was an ornithopod because of its three rounded toes.

#WalkingWithDinosaurs #WWD2025

1/2

Worth a repost for #DinosaurDay!

We are excited to partner with the State Historic Preservation Office, Sema Hadithi, and Price City to kick off the Buffalo Soldier Heritage Trail. Register at the link below.

tinyurl.com/bshtregistra...

Our #dinosaurs and our #paleontologists from the Prehistoric Museum at USU Eastern will take center stage for episode 3 of Walking With Dinosaurs, premiering on PBS June 16-18.

Check us out on the international stage and see the real thing in Price, #Utah!

We’ll be back #LiveFromTheField again starting in August!

4/4

We followed up that trip with an expedition to the Cretaceous Neslen Formation in the Book Cliffs outside of Green River. The main focus was geology, giving a number of our @ustatescience.bsky.social #geology students the opportunity to practice the skill of measuring geologic section.

3/4

We were especially successful finding microsites, which sample a broader portion of the ecosystem than the typical #fossil locality.

2/4