Extremely rare Jurassic era fossils have just been found in Utah

Scientists recently found an “extremely rare” set of prehistoric fossils along a stretch of the reservoir in Utah. The crew of palaeontologists was near Lake Powell to study the fossil near its tracks when they found these rare fossils. The unusual fossils discovered arein a tritylodontid bonebed in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah.

It is the first tritylodontid bonebed to be discovered there, the National Park Service said in a news release. The park service called the find “one of the more important fossil vertebrate discoveries in the United States this year.”

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The bonebed includes “body fossils”, like bones and teeth, which are rarely seen in the Navajo Sandstone, a geologic formation in the Glen Canyon area that is typically seen in southern Utah.

"This new discovery will shed light on the fossil history exposed on the changing shorelines of Lake Powell," the park service said. Lake Powell is a major artificial reservoir along the Colorado River that runs across southern Utah and into Arizona.

How these rare fossils were discovered?

Field crews were able to recover the rare fossils during a short 120-day window during which they accessed the location in Navajo Sandstone, the park service said, noting that the site “had been submerged by Lake Powell’s fluctuating water levels and was only found because the palaeontologists were in the right place at the right time before annual snowmelt filled the lake."

Another rare bonebed was found nearby in the Kayenta Formation, which is slightly older than the sandstone where the tritylondontid discovery was made, according to the park service.

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"The crew collected several hundred pounds of rocks encasing the fossil bones and skeletons at the site," the agency said.

The rocks recovered from the site will be scanned using X-ray and computerised tomography at the University of Utah South Jordan Health Center. After this, these rocks will be studied further at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm by laboratory and collections crew volunteers.

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The Petrified Forest National Park and the Smithsonian Institution will support the project as the fossils become part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area museum collections.

Studying these fossils will help palaeontologists learn more about how early mammal relatives survived the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period and diversified through the Jurassic Period, said the National Park Service.

(With inputs from agencies)

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