Travel billions of years in Uintah

There are few places in this world were people can look back in time and view the entire world's history in rock — Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic and Precambrian periods or roughly 4.5 billion years — spread over just a few miles of road.

One such place starts in Uintah County.

And, there are few places where people can take a more educational approach to travel than through the town of Vernal, the diggings at Dinosaur National Monument, rafting the Green River or touring the Uintas and seeing such full-time residents as bighorn sheep, marmots, ferrets, several species of hawks, osprey, deer, elk and moose.

What you know:

If there were a natural library of early history, those times long before humans built fires and put up walls for living quarters, it would certainly have to be Uintah County, not to be confused with Uinta Mountains.

Uintah County was named after the Ute Indian tribe that lives in the basin. Early maps put an "H" on the end of the word, but John Wesley Powell chose to leave the "H" off in his writings, and as a result both variations are in use.

One of the more familiar sites in the county is, of course, the Dinosaur National Monument.

The nationally preserved site holds the largest Jurassic-period fossil bone quarry in the world. Along with the bones, the quarry features a paleontology laboratory, exhibits and bookstore with all the latest editions on dinosaurs of all shapes, sizes and eating habits.

Excavated from the river sediment in the 150 million-year-old Morrison Formation have been fossilized bones of crocodiles, turtles and 10 species of dinosaurs. Along with watching experts uncover bones, visitors can also have that opportunity.

Besides identifying dinosaur bones in the area, those hiking in the Morrison Formations can also find gastroliths, which are stones ingested by dinosaurs to help in digesting their food, lying on top of the soil.

There is a direct link between the dig site on the Utah/Colorado border and the Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal. In the Vernal museum, visitors get a resourceful, insightful and at times interactive trip through history.

Visitors learn what is unique and exciting about the basin from paleontological and geological perspectives.

Plans call for the National Park Service, operators of the nearby dinosaur monument, to build an addition onto the Vernal facility where findings can be stored and a working preparation lab can be built.