Scientists decry Trump’s move to strip fossil treasures from Utah’s Grand Staircase monument
Kaiparowits Plateau holds a well-preserved, 25 million-year record of prehistoric animals living during the key Late Cretaceous period — along with most of Utah’s untapped coal reserves.
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(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fossil Preparation Lab Manager Tylor Birthisel and volunteer Ann Johnson work on a... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paleontology volunteer Randy Johnson holds part of a 75 million-year-old Pentacera... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Diabloceratops eatoni skull discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A 76 million-year-old Kosmoceratops richardsoni skull discovered in the Grand Stair... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a 210 million-year-old Phytosaur skull discovered in Indian Creek at the N... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chief Curator/Curator of Paleontology Randall Irmis holds a Gryposaur skin impress... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Tyrannosaurid skull from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natu... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a crocodilian fossil at the Natural History Museum of Utah. (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Tyrannosaurid tibia and fibula from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument ... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a ~80 million-year-old Parasaurolophus skull from the Grand Staircase-Esca... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a Tyrannosaurid tail from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at ... (Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paleontology volunteer Randy Johnson holds part of a 75 million-year-old Pentacer...
(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fossil Preparation Lab Manager Tylor Birthisel and volunteer Ann Johnson work on a Tyrannosaurid skull from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paleontology volunteer Randy Johnson holds part of a 75 million-year-old Pentaceratops skull he discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Diabloceratops eatoni skull discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A 76 million-year-old Kosmoceratops richardsoni skull discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a 210 million-year-old Phytosaur skull discovered in Indian Creek at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chief Curator/Curator of Paleontology Randall Irmis holds a Gryposaur skin impression discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Tyrannosaurid skull from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a crocodilian fossil at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Tyrannosaurid tibia and fibula from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a ~80 million-year-old Parasaurolophus skull from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a Tyrannosaurid tail from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paleontology volunteer Randy Johnson holds part of a 75 million-year-old Pentaceratops skull he discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
Randy Irmis rubbed his fingers over bumpy imprints of the scaly skin of a creature that lived 76 million years ago, once roaming what is now Utah’s Kaiparowits Plateau.
Dinosaur skin is a rare find, the Natural History Museum of Utah paleontologist says, but not in that desolate corner of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Conditions for fossilizing remains of dinosaurs and many other animals were so good in the region, says Irmis, that at least half the duck-billed dinosaur specimens recovered there have skin.
“With so many skin impressions, we have been able to tell species’ specific features from their skin,” he said recently while touring the Salt Lake City museum’s collections, which house 2,000 fossils recovered from the Kaiparowits since the monument was designated in 1996.
Those intervening two decades have seen a flood of scientific discoveries pour out of the remote high desert plateau, which also harbors a fossil bounty of another kind — vast reserves of coal.
Scientists now fear that President Donald Trump’s order last week to downsize Grand Staircase — freeing some of those fuel reserves for potential development — could also imperil one of the world’s richest paleontological areas, holding the keys to understanding life’s evolution at a critical period in Earth’s history. Some of these researchers are now suing in federal court to halt the move
A 1,650 square-mile triangle bounded by the Straight Cliffs on the east and the Cockscomb on the west, the Kaiparowits contains an unbroken fossil record spanning about 25 million years of the Late Cretaceous, from 100 million to 75 million years ago — an era when ecosystems first emerged that we would recognize today, filled with flowering plants and familiar backboned animals like lizards, snakes, amphibians, turtles and mammals.
“It has really transformed how we understand the Late Cretaceous and its extinction events and what happened after the extinction events,” says David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Diabloceratops eatoni skull discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah Wednesday, November 29, 2017.
On Monday, Trump flew to Utah and signed proclamations breaking the once 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument into two monuments, totaling 201,876 acres. He also trimmed the Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.9 million acres to about 1 million, segmenting it into three smaller monuments, including a new Kaiparowits National Monument covering 551,034 acres.
The redrawn Kaiparowits preserve resembles a jigsaw puzzle piece with large areas carved out. Maps reveal that some of those carve-outs, such as Alvey Wash, overlap with mineable coal seams and old mineral leases. According to analyses by the environmental group Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others, retired oil and gas leases on the plateau also match up neatly with areas excised from the monument by Trump’s decree.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology — a global organization of scientists, students, artists, writers and other scholars dedicated to the discovery, study and preservation of vertebrate fossils — has joined Conservation Lands Foundation and Grand Staircase Escalante Partners in a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking the Interior Department from cutting the monument by half.
Their legal challenge was one of five filed as of Friday against the Utah monument reductions.
“In the areas being excluded from these monuments are scientifically important paleontological resources,” says Polly, also a geology professor at Indiana University. “Members of our society have chosen to work there because of their uniqueness and because of the protections that the monument has provided for them, which are guarantees of the longevity and preservation of those sites which is not guaranteed on ordinary federal lands.”
(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a crocodilian fossil at the Natural History Museum of Utah Wednesday, November 29, 2017.
While other protections still apply to the excluded acreages, if they are now opened to multiple uses, as envisioned by Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Polly said, “mining can easily take precedence.”
Fossils are not a resource whose extraction can generate jobs and economic activity the way fossil fuels and other mineral resources can. President Bill Clinton’s surprise monument proclamation in 1996 stung southern Utah’s Kane and Garfield counties, whose leaders deeply resented the subsequent loss of two proposed coal mines and the jobs they promised.
Under the Kaiparowits are massive deposits of high-quality coal that account for about two-thirds of Utah’s known reserves. About 22 billion tons lies in mineable seams, at least four feet thick, and about half that is deemed “recoverable,” according to the Utah Geological Survey.
In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017, photo, Tylor Birthisel, left, Alan Titus, center, and Jeanette Bonnell, right right work to move some of the plaster-encased bundles of the fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton found near Tropic, Utah. The nearly complete fossilized remains of a tyrannosaur found two years ago in southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument were airlifted to the Natural History Museum of Utah on Sunday. Titus discovered the fossils in the monument's Kaiparowits Formation. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)
The coal is located in the Straight Cliffs Formation, deposited between 95 million and 80 million years ago and is immediately below the sedimentary formations — Kaiparowits and Wahweap — that are yielding headline-grabbing dinosaur discoveries.
The minable coal deposits tend to be on the east side of the Smoky Mountain Road that traverses the plateau north to south, connecting the rural communities of Escalante and Big Water. One state official insists that separation makes the potential threat to fossil treasures from coal mining relatively small.
“These things aren’t in the same place. The coal is east and the dinosaurs are west,” says paleontologist Jim Kirkland of the Utah Geological Survey. “The mines aren’t going to affect the dinosaur stuff very much.”
The Kaiparowits coal beds formed in coastal mangrove and cypress swamps, where plant material was preserved and later fossilized into the black rock rich in carbon. Vertebrate fossils are not often found in coal deposits because the swamps filled with decaying plants were so acidic that conditions eroded bones away before they could fossilize, according to Kirkland.
(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Part of a Tyrannosaurid tail from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Natural History Museum of Utah Wednesday, November 29, 2017.
But Irmis, with the Natural History Museum of Utah, is not convinced. Coal-rich portions of the Kaiparowits have not been scoured for fossils yet, he noted, and the fraction of the plateau already surveyed has yielded thousands of specimens.
Paleontologists have identified 964 sites on the plateau that have so far produced 2,000 specimens now in the museum’s collections. Other museums working the Kaiparowits include the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and California’s Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology.
The redrawn monument boundaries also worry Utah paleontologist Jeff Eaton, a mammals specialist who conducted some of the first research on the plateau with his wife, Linda, in the 1980s. The Eatons are credited with initially alerting the Clinton administration to the Kaiparowits’ scientific values, then under threat from the proposed Andalex coal mine at Smoky Hollow.
Portions of Eaton’s writings on the plateau’s scientific importance were, in fact, included in Clinton’s 1996 proclamation designating Grand Staircase as a national monument.
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(Tribune File Photo) The Vermilion Cliffs tower over the Lees Ferry Lodge in northern Arizona. (Courtesy of Jerry Roundy) Dance Hall Rock near hole in the rock road. (Courtesy of the National Park Service) Steve Henry, a Nation Park Service backcounty ranger, visits Hole in the Rock, the f... (Erin Alberty | Tribune File Photo) Fins of rock protrude in layers near the mouth of Surprise Canyon in the Waterpocket F... (Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two mile ranch is one top of the Vermilion Cliffs, to the left, overlooking the K... (Erin Alberty | Tribune File Photo) The Burr Trail winds up the Waterpocket Fold and into the morning sun Oct. 5, 2015 in ... (Tribune File Photo) Rock formations and scenery changes each day while hiking along the Paria River on Wednesday, Sept. 28,... (Tribune File Photo) Peter Wagner signs a log book after hiking nearly 50 miles through Paria Canyon. Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2... (Tribune File Photo) Scott Radford navigates the silty Paria River on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. (Tribune File Photo) Kodachrome Basin State Park serves as a good base camp for visits into the Grand Staircase-Escalante Na... (Courtesy photo) Vermilion Cliffs. (Al Hartmann | Tribune File Photo) Tourist scratches his head at the immensity of the view of the Escalante Canyons from ... (Al Hartmann | Tribune File Photo) Broken country of scrub and sandstone washed on top of the Kaiparowits Plateau in the G... (Tribune File Photo) Peter Wagner navigates the silty Paria River on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. (Tribune File Photo) Hikers follow the silty Paria River on Monday, Sept. 26, 2016. (Tribune File Photo) Hikers follow the silty Paria River on Monday, Sept. 26, 2016. (Tribune File Photo) Sunlight peeks into the narrows of Buckskin Gulch on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016. (Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two mile ranch is one top of the Vermilion Cliffs, to the left, overlooking the K... (Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two Mile Ranch encompasses the entire Paria Plateau, which makes up the majority ... (Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune File Photo) Rick Green, owner of Excursions of the Escalante surveys the landscape he calls ... (Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune File Photo) Slot canyon guide Rick Green gets a bird's-eye view on the progress being made b... (Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) At right, Justin Miller, of Salt Lake City, and other anti-ATV protesters at the "... (Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) McKenzie Carlsle tallies the number of vehicles that pass the "Picnic With a Purpo... (Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) ATV riders pass deeper into the national monument along the Paria riverbed. ATV an...
(Tribune File Photo) The Vermilion Cliffs tower over the Lees Ferry Lodge in northern Arizona.(Courtesy of Jerry Roundy) Dance Hall Rock near hole in the rock road.(Courtesy of the National Park Service) Steve Henry, a Nation Park Service backcounty ranger, visits Hole in the Rock, the famous trail cut by Mormon pioneer expedition to reach San Juan County in 1880, along with anthropologist Katie Brown, and Erik Stanfield, a cultural resource specialist for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.(Erin Alberty | Tribune File Photo) Fins of rock protrude in layers near the mouth of Surprise Canyon in the Waterpocket Fold on Oct. 4, 2015 in Capitol Reef National Park.(Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two mile ranch is one top of the Vermilion Cliffs, to the left, overlooking the Kane Ranch below.(Erin Alberty | Tribune File Photo) The Burr Trail winds up the Waterpocket Fold and into the morning sun Oct. 5, 2015 in Capitol Reef National Park.(Tribune File Photo) Rock formations and scenery changes each day while hiking along the Paria River on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Peter Wagner signs a log book after hiking nearly 50 miles through Paria Canyon. Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Scott Radford navigates the silty Paria River on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Kodachrome Basin State Park serves as a good base camp for visits into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Grosvner Arch is about 10 miles south of the state park on the Cottonwood Canyon dirt road. The arch was named by a National Geographic Soecity expedition in the late 1940s in honor of Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, president of the Society.(Courtesy photo) Vermilion Cliffs.(Al Hartmann | Tribune File Photo) Tourist scratches his head at the immensity of the view of the Escalante Canyons from Highway 12. It's just a small part of the monster Escalante-Grandstaircase Monument.(Al Hartmann | Tribune File Photo) Broken country of scrub and sandstone washed on top of the Kaiparowits Plateau in the Grand Staricasae-Escalante national Monument is wilderness at its best. This area is one of the most rugged and desolate areas in the west.(Tribune File Photo) Peter Wagner navigates the silty Paria River on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Hikers follow the silty Paria River on Monday, Sept. 26, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Hikers follow the silty Paria River on Monday, Sept. 26, 2016.(Tribune File Photo) Sunlight peeks into the narrows of Buckskin Gulch on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016.(Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two mile ranch is one top of the Vermilion Cliffs, to the left, overlooking the Kane Ranch below.(Chris Detrick | Tribune File Photo) The Two Mile Ranch encompasses the entire Paria Plateau, which makes up the majority of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. The Two Mile ranch is 250,000 acres in size and it borders the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to the north. The Vermillion Cliffs are on the western edge of the Two Mile Ranch.(Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune File Photo) Rick Green, owner of Excursions of the Escalante surveys the landscape he calls home in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, taking customers down slot canyons and also playing a central role helping local authorities when it comes to rescuing those who get into problems in such a remote place. (Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune File Photo) Slot canyon guide Rick Green gets a bird's-eye view on the progress being made by his group through one of the many slot canyons in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.(Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) At right, Justin Miller, of Salt Lake City, and other anti-ATV protesters at the "Picnic with a Purpose" make their point to ATV'ers as they pass this spot on the Paria riverbed. ATV and off-road vehicle riders numbering about 100 protested BLM road closures in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Saturday.(Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) McKenzie Carlsle tallies the number of vehicles that pass the "Picnic With a Purpose" which took up a spot alongside the Paria Riverbed to protest the ATV'ers protest on May 9, 2009. When the picnickers left their spot, they had tallied 115 vehicles.(Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune File Photo) ATV riders pass deeper into the national monument along the Paria riverbed. ATV and off-road vehicle riders numbering about 100 protested BLM road closures in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Saturday.
“That is the essential core of the monument. That is where the fossils come from,” Eaton told The Salt Lake Tribune before Trump’s visit. “This is nonsense to remove the Kaiparowits Plateau from monument designation.”
He considers the beautiful landscapes on either side — the Escalante Canyons to the northeast and the Grand Staircase to the west — to be “add-ons” to the monument, better known for their scenic qualities than their scientific resources.
Coal industry supporters say the Kaiparowits reserves lie hundreds of feet below and would be mined using underground longwall operations that would not disturb the surface except at key points of entry. But environmentalists reject that assertion and note that mining isn’t the only threat to the area; Trump’s decision also opens it to potential oil and gas drilling.
“If something like fracking was done,” Polly says, “that will not only fragment the fossils along with the shale, it will also change geochemical signals in the rock.”
In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017, photo, Tylor Birthisel, lab and field manager for paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah, reaches to control the plaster-encased skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex found near Tropic, Utah. The nearly complete fossilized remains of a tyrannosaur found two years ago in southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument were airlifted to the Natural History Museum of Utah on Sunday. Grand Staircase paleontologist Alan Titus discovered the fossils in the monument's Kaiparowits Formation. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)
Others note the value to science of protecting places where fossils have been excavated.
“The importance is not just the fossil itself but the context,” Irmis says. “The fact that I can go to sites that were excavated 10 or 50 years ago makes a big difference in discovering new information. There are new techniques we could apply that we couldn’t when the fossil was excavated. It happens all the time.”
Given the declining interest in coal and the remoteness the Kaiparowits deposits, many say it is unlikely they would be tapped anytime soon — but the possibility still has scientists on edge.
“Once there is coal mining, once there are coal roads, everything environmentally is downhill,” Eaton says. “The saddest part is the destruction of the landscape. There is no one in the U.S. to use that coal. That coal is used to sell to China. We are giving up marvelous research for a few bucks.”
Correction: The final quote in this story was from Utah paleontologist Jeff Eaton. An earlier version mis-attributed the quote.