New Mural for Dinosaur National Monument

When I visited Utah's Dinosaur National Monument this past summer the main visitor center (containing the famous rock wall speckled with fossils) was closed, but when it reopens in a few years it will feature a brand new piece of art. Over the course of three months, scientific illustrator Liz Bradford dug into the prehistory of the monument to produce a restoration of what the area might have looked like when Allosaurus and Stegosaurus roamed the area about 150 million years ago. Even better, Bradford took a photo of her work in progress every hour and strung all the photos together to show how the mural came to life. You can see that video on the Dinosaur National Monument website.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.