Southern Nevada District Office
| Contacts: | Kirsten Cannon | , 702-515-5057 | , k1cannon@blm.gov |
Red Rock Canyon Hosts Nevada Dinosaurs Presentation October 10
Las Vegas – Bones and teeth and tracks, oh my! On October 10, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area will offer visitors an opportunity to go back to a time when dinosaurs were Nevada’s most prominent residents.
At 1:30 p.m., Dr. Josh Bonde from UNLV’s Geoscience Department will discuss how prior to the early 2000s, Nevada’s dinosaurs were only discovered in a few sites in the northeastern part of the state.
These days, dinosaur remains have been discovered in four of Nevada's 17 counties.
So far, Nevada’s dinosaurs are known from two of the three periods of the Age of Dinosaurs, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous.
The Jurassic-aged fossils represent footprints in a vast sand sea which covered the entire west coast of North America 200 to 180 million years ago. These tracks are found in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area as well as Valley of Fire State Park.
Cretaceous-aged fossils are found in both southern and northern Nevada. These fossils represent bones and teeth of animals which lived on flood plains 115 to 95 million years ago. They include a variety of meat-eating and plant-eating dinosaurs, in addition to fish, turtles, and crocodiles.
Many significant discoveries are made by the public who work with public land managers and professional paleontologists to discover, record and preserve paleontological resources on public lands. If you discover tracks or trackways at Red Rock Canyon, please call 702-515-5350 as soon as possible and provide information about location and photographs.
Please help protect paleontological sites. It is illegal to dig, remove, or collect vertebrate fossils without a permit. Never take molds or castings, or apply anything to fossils including trackways. Never drive over, walk on or sit on fossils.
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On Saturday October 20, 2012 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area will observe National Fossil Day and National Archeology Day. A number of organizations who share a common mission in protecting or managing natural and cultural resources will set up various displays and table-top interpretive materials to inform the public about their specific organization and the role they play in preserving our resources.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.