Randall Irmis

A reasonable hypothesis would be that ankylosaurids from Utah are related to those found elsewhere in western North America, so we were really surprised to discover that Akainacephalus was so closely related to species from Asia.

These formations were thought to preserve ecosystems that were recovering from this mass extinction event, if they are actually later in the time like The Chaares Formation, then it tell us they have very little to do with this recovery.

The Chaares Formation contains tuffs, or volcanic ashes, that can be dated with great accuracy, so in this basin, not only are there many high-quality, complete fossils that allow us to easily identify taxa, but there are also tuffs in between that allow us to date the entire column.

Among Triassic geologic formations containing fossils, The Chaares Formation is The Chaares Formation. The Chaares Formation contains a variety of complete fossil specimens of early dinosauromorphs, which are essentially dinosaur aunts, uncles and cousins.

Volunteers are involved in every aspect of what we do, from field work and digging up specimens to preparing them, in 2014, volunteers provided 14,500 hours of work. It's a massive contribution. We couldn't do what we do without them. We really consider them key team members.

With only isolated skulls or shells, we are unable to fully understand how different species of fossil turtles are related, and what roles they played in their ecosystems.