Garden Park is a

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...

site in

Fremont County, Colorado Fremont County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 48,939. The county seat is Cañon City. The county is named for 19th-century explorer and presidential candidate John C. Frémont. Fre ...

, known for its

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

dinosaurs and the role the specimens played in the infamous

Bone Wars The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Acad ...

of the late 19th century. Located north of Cañon City, the name originates from the area providing vegetables to the miners at nearby Cripple Creek in the 19th century. Garden Park proper is a triangular valley surrounded by cliffs on the southeast and southwest and by mountains to the north; however, the name is also refers to the dinosaur sites on top and along the cliffs. The dinosaur sites now form th
Garden Park Paleontological Resource Area
which is overseen by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's ...

Geology

Garden Park was formed by erosion of sedimentary rocks that have been distorted by uplift of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

. The region is bisected by Four Mile Creek (also called Oil Creek), which has carved a canyon through the Mesozoic and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. One of these Mesozoic strata is the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltston ...

, which is exposed within the canyon. However, because the formation contains high amounts of swelling clays, large faulted blocks or slump-blocks of the formation are slowly moving towards the creek. The result is to make it difficult to correlate the various dinosaur quarries because exposures are limited and not continuous. The formation in Garden Park can be divided informally into a lower and upper unit. The lower unit is composed primarily green and gray mudstones, with numerous lenticular, white to tan to gray sandstones. The upper is composed mostly of red mudstone, with lesser amounts of yellowish, often tabular sandstone. These two units probably correspond to the Tidwell, Saltwash and Brushy Basin members of the Morrison Formation on the Colorado Plateau.

Dinosaurs

The discovery of dinosaurs in the Garden Park area has been presented numerous times by Schuchert and LeVene, Shur, Ostrom and McIntosh, and Jaffe.

Othniel Charles Marsh Othniel Charles Marsh (October 29, 1831 – March 18, 1899) was an American professor of Paleontology in Yale College and President of the National Academy of Sciences. He was one of the preeminent scientists in the field of paleontology. Among ...

and

Edward Drinker Cope Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interes ...

both produced major finds here. The lesser known post-Marsh and Cope collecting of dinosaurs has been presented by Monaco. She recounts the expeditions by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the early 20th century, the Denver Museum of Natural History in the 1930 and 1990s, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the mid-1950s. Dinosaurs from Garden Park on display include ''

Allosaurus ''Allosaurus'' () is a genus of large carnosaurian theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 145 million years ago during the Late Jurassic epoch ( Kimmeridgian to late Tithonian). The name "''Allosaurus''" means "different lizard" alludin ...

fragilis'', ''

Diplodocus ''Diplodocus'' (, , or ) was a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs, whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a neo-Latin term derived from Greek δ ...

longus'', ''

Ceratosaurus ''Ceratosaurus'' (from Greek κέρας/κέρατος, ' meaning "horn" and σαῦρος ' meaning "lizard") was a carnivorous theropod dinosaur in the Late Jurassic period ( Kimmeridgian to Tithonian). The genus was first described in 1 ...

nasicornis'', and ''

Stegosaurus ''Stegosaurus'' (; ) is a genus of herbivorous, four-legged, armored dinosaur from the Late Jurassic, characterized by the distinctive kite-shaped upright plates along their backs and spikes on their tails. Fossils of the genus have been fou ...

stenops'' at the National Museum of Natural History, ''

Haplocanthosaurus ''Haplocanthosaurus'' (meaning "simple spined lizard") is a genus of intermediate sauropod dinosaur. Two species, ''H. delfsi'' and ''H. priscus'', are known from incomplete fossil skeletons. It lived during the late Jurassic period (Kimmeridgia ...

delfsi'' at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and '' Othnielosaurus consors'' (then called ''

Othnielia ''Nanosaurus'' ("small or dwarf lizard") is the name given to a genus of neornithischian dinosaur that lived about 155 to 148 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic-age. Its fossils are known from the Morrison Formation of the south-wester ...

rex''), ''Stegosaurus stenops'' and a clutch of ''Preprismatoolithus coloradensis'' eggs at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Major vertebrate quarries

references McIntosh, J.S. 1998. New information about the Cope collection of sauropods from Garden Park, Colorado. In Carpenter, K., Chure, D. and Kirkland, J.I. (eds.) The Morrison Formation: An Interdisciplinary Study. Modern Geology 23:481-506. (h) = holotype

References

External links

Garden Park Fossil Area
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Hands On The Land
{{authority control Jurassic Colorado Jurassic paleontological sites of North America Morrison Formation Paleontology in Colorado Protected areas of Fremont County, Colorado Bureau of Land Management areas in Colorado