8 Places In Utah To See Dinosaurs

Utah has some of the best dinosaur fossils in the country, and you don't have to drive far to see them. The Tyrannosaurus Rex, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and the state's own Utahraptor all once roamed this ground. Here's where to find their bones today.

This museum sits inside the Rio Tinto Center on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City. The Doré Eccles Gallery shows how Utah's landscape changed over millions of years. You can dig alongside a "paleontologist for a day" exhibit, and the museum has more than 30 full skeletons plus a display of 14 horned dinosaur skulls.

301 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City

Part of this monument sits across the border in Dinosaur, Colorado, but the western section is in Utah, where the Yampa and Green Rivers cut through dramatic canyons. The monument protects nearly 210,900 acres of fossils, and paleontologists still dig there today. In 2010, a team from Brigham Young University and the University of Michigan found a new species here: Abydosaurus mcintoshi, a large plant-eating dinosaur.

The visitor center is two miles east of Dinosaur, CO, and runs late spring through early fall.

This park near the mouth of Ogden Canyon features more than 100 creatures from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, including the Utahraptor, Parasaurolophus, Triceratops, and a 20-foot Tyrannosaurus. The hands-on exhibits let kids touch and explore, and there's a working paleontology lab on site. Some displays even play sounds like footsteps and snapping trees.

1544 E. Park Blvd., Ogden

BYU used to store dinosaur bones under the bleachers at LeVell Edwards Stadium. They've since moved everything into a proper museum, built in 1976, with fossils collected from Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana. About 25,000 people visit each year to see dinosaur eggs with X-rays of the embryo inside, full skeletons, skulls, skin fossils, and a mineral collection.

1683 N. Canyon Rd., Provo

This site has a good story behind it. In February 2000, landowner Dr. Sheldon Johnson was leveling his property and flipped over a rock slab. Underneath were dinosaur tracks pressed into sandstone from the early Jurassic period. Crews have since found more than 3,500 tracks across 10 acres, including one of only five known dinosaur "butt impressions" in the world.

2180 East Riverside Drive, St. George

No list of Utah dinosaur spots is complete without this one. The museum sits inside the larger Thanksgiving Point complex in Lehi, alongside the Museum of Natural Curiosity, the Ashton Gardens, and a movie theater. It has a gallery of 60 complete dinosaur skeletons plus more than 50 hands-on exhibits, so kids get to touch as much as they look. Easy to turn into a full day out.

3003 N. Thanksgiving Way, Lehi

This is the real deal for anyone who wants to see an active dig site, not just a museum case. The quarry sits inside Jurassic National Monument in the San Rafael Swell, about 33 miles south of Price. It holds the densest collection of Jurassic-era dinosaur fossils ever found anywhere: more than 12,000 bones from at least 74 different dinosaurs. Nobody knows for sure why so many ended up in one spot. You can walk outdoor trails, tour the museum, and during field season watch paleontologists and volunteers work the bone beds in person.

About 33 miles south of Price

Utahraptor State Park sits about 15 miles northwest of Moab and holds one of the largest dinosaur bone beds in North America. Crews have pulled more than 5,500 bones from over ten species during 45 years of digging, including the Utahraptor, the armored Gastonia, and the long-necked sauropod Moabosaurus. Paleontologists think more than 100,000 bones still wait underground at the site. Beyond the fossils, the park offers off-roading, hiking, and mountain biking, so you can make a full day of it.

About 15 miles northwest of Moab