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travel

Digging for dinosaurs
Our expert offers tips on family-oriented dino sites, historic Route 66 and Welsh bardic tourneys.

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By Donald D. Groff

June 01, 2000 |

We just visited a dinosaur exhibit, and our son was particularly interested in the sand and bone pit they had erected for children to chisel in the rocks. Are there real dinosaur sites that one can visit to help excavate? Is there an age limit for participants?

The release of the movie "Dinosaur" and the unveiling of Sue the T-Rex at Chicago's Field Museum are just the latest logs thrown on the fire of dino adoration, and children, of course, are at the forefront of the frenzy. While professional digs are geared to adults, the public's fascination with the topic has prompted quite a few communities, many in the West, to cultivate their dinosaur assets. And that includes hands-on excavations for kids.

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Among the possibilities:

Thermopolis, Wyo., home of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, with guided tours of dinosaur excavation sites and a large museum complex. You can "dig for a day" or string together days at a discounted rate. Thermopolis is in central Wyoming. The Dinosaur Center's phone numbers are (800) 455-3466 and (307) 864-2997.

Grand Junction, Colo., and its environs are known locally as Dinosaur Valley. Attractions include the Dinosaur Valley Museum, which offers day digs and longer expeditions, plus Riggs Hill, where the first known brachiosaur was discovered in 1900, and Dinosaur Hill, where the apatosaurus now in Chicago's Field Museum was found. There's also the Rabbit Valley "Trail Through Time," a self-guided one-and-a-half-mile walking trail through an area with lots of dinosaur remains. For information on the area, call the Grand Junction Visitor Bureau at (800) 962-2547 or (970) 244-1480.

In Rocky Hill, Conn., Dinosaur State Park has hundreds of dinosaur tracks from which visitors can make plaster casts. Information: (860) 529-8423.

For a guide to all sorts of dinosaur sites and programs, check out the book "Dinosaur Digs" by Blake Edgar (Discovery Travel Adventures, 1999). A good site for learning about dinosaurs, dig programs and excerpts from that book can be found at Discovery.com's Fossil Zone.

Another helpful book is "Dino Safari: Fun Places for Adults and Children to Learn About Dinosaurs" (An American Safari Guide) by R.L. Jones (Cumberland House, 1999).

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