A stretch of the Dakota Hogback just west of Denver, near Morrison, where in 1877 Arthur Lakes, a clergyman, teacher and amateur palaeontologist from Golden, and Henry Beckwith, a retired naval officer, found the first dinosaur material ever discovered in the Morrison Formation. Yale’s O. C. Marsh directed the excavation that followed, and the Jurassic rocks on the west side of the ridge gave up the first Stegosaurus fossils identified anywhere in the world, along with Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus and Allosaurus. The east side is Cretaceous Dakota Formation. In 1937 workers building the road to Red Rocks Park found dinosaur tracks there, mostly Iguanodon-like prints, perhaps of the ornithopod Eolambia, with bird-like ornithomimid, crocodilian and large theropod tracks among them, and as those were damaged over time more were uncovered on purpose. The ridge became a National Natural Landmark in 1973, and the non-profit Friends of Dinosaur Ridge has worked to protect it and teach visitors there since 1989.
The first Stegosaurus, and a hogback full of tracks · Jurassic and Cretaceous
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
