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The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is located in Thermopolis, WY, and is one of the few dinosaur museums in the world to have its own excavation localities within driving distance of its laboratory and curation facility. Though better known for its more open tourist access to the excavation processes, the Wyoming Dinosaur Center abandoned commercial goals in the early 1990's shortly after it’s founding to pursue a more scientific agenda. This includes running its own excavations to the acquisition of rare fossil specimens from the private market and making them available for scientific research. Most famously, this is seen in the Thermopolis Specimen of Archaeopteryx, which was in private hands for decades before an anonymous donor donated it to the museum. Other notable discoveries include site "SI", which is a rare occurrence of both footprints and skeletal fossils located in the same context, this has been suggested to have been a demonstration of allosaurus feeding behavior by Dr. Bob Baker. Additional testing of the site has shown that it may be the result of a unique occurrence of multiple deposits, the footprint layer being the most prominent. Further down the same road is site "FS", which contains at least one juvenile diplodocid with preserved articulated feet. Finally, between the two sites is "TYA", which contains the remains of multiple allosaurs, represented almost exclusively by cranial elements. The Wyoming Dinosaur Center represents multiple slices of the prehistory of Wyoming. Most famous is "the hill", which contains multiple-layered dinosaur sites in the Morrison Formation, these fossils have not been concretely dated but appear to be from the Tinthonian, or Upper-Jurassic Period. A secondary locality on the same ranch lands has several occurrences of Cretaceous Marine Reptiles in addition to turtles and crocodiles occurring in the Thermopolis Shale. The Sundance Sea Formation has multiple occurrences of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs scattered about just below the Morrison, the principle sites lie just below the fossil rich "hill" containing the Center's more famous Jurassic specimens. Isolated fish teeth have been recovered from its Lakota or "Cloverly" Formation. The total stratigraphy of the Warm Spring Ranch lands include the Chugwater Formation (Triassic), Gypsum Springs Formation (Lower Jurassic), Sundance Sea Formation (Mid-Jurassic), Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Cloverly Formation (Lower Cretaceous), and Thermopolis Shale (Lower-mid Cretaceous). This runs the full time span of a larger era known as the Mesozoic, which is characterized by Dinosaurs, marine and flying reptiles and the gradual emergence of mammals along with several species of invertebrates, most prominently the ammonites and belemnites. The Wyoming Dinosaur Center allows fossils stored at its locality to be monitored by the Big Horn Basin Foundation, which exists exclusively to insure that fossils are treated as scientific specimens. The Wyoming Dinosaur Center itself is primarily the building that houses the laboratory and collections, but also the full museum and gift shop, while the Big Horn Basin Foundation involves excavations, curation, and other more scientific activities. |
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