The Dinosaur National Monument Quarry Visitor Center remains closed due to safety concerns, preventing paleontologists and other interested individuals from seeing one of the United State's largest and best quarry of dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period.
Around 1,500 dinosaur bones are at the site, along with reconstructions of a juvenile allosaurus and a sauropod.
(Image: Allosaurus skull at the monument; Credit: National Park Service)


The National Park Service explains, "The Quarry Visitor Center has experienced continuing problems with foundation movement since its construction on expansive soils in 1957. The building was closed in July 2006 due to the serious life and safety hazards caused by this movement. The National Park Service (NPS) is working to re-open the famous cliff face of dinosaur bones as quickly as possible."
Even in this lousy economy, a glimmer of hope surfaced this week. The project is said to be receiving more than $13 million in federal stimulus funds. Bids are now being sought for the rebuild, which is predicted to finish in 2011.
The Dinosaur National Monument is located along the border of Utah and Colorado and is 150 miles east of Salt Lake City.
It's still worth the road trip.
"There is a Temporary Visitor Center near the Quarry Visitor Center that contains real fossils and exhibits," according to the NPS. "You can take the Fossil Discovery Hike (approx. 1.5 miles round trip) and see a variety of fossils still embedded in rock."

What soap opera or TV thriller hasn't featured murder, conspiracy and suicide? We all know humans are capable of these things, but a new play, "Hominid," puts a twist on the drama by having human actors re-enact such events that took place in a colony of chimpanzees.
The stories are real and were documented by world-renowned Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal in his best-selling book, "Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes."
Dr. de Waal tells me he is very pleased with the play, and notes that audiences won't see any actual chimps. Instead, he explained, "the actors act like chimpified humans!"

Here's a summary of the drama, as provided by Emory:
"A conniving kingmaker and his young protégé conspire to overthrow a popular king. Their plot fails, so they murder him instead. The kingmaker then installs his protégé as ruler. The young king does not properly reward his mentor, however, so the kingmaker selects a new protégé. Together, they torment the young king to the point of madness. He throws himself into the palace moat and drowns.

The brutal power struggle reads like a Shakespearean tragedy, but it actually happened on an island of captive chimpanzees at a Holland zoo during the late 1970s."