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EMERY COUNTY — A vacation in the San Rafael Desert turned into a major historic discovery when a family unearthed a dinosaur.
A Utah family and their friends were enjoying their vacation in the San Rafael Desert over the weekend when they made the discovery. Amanda Watt said the annual trip is part of a longtime family tradition her father-in-law started.
"He would bring his kids out for rock-hounding adventures," Watt said.
Emery County is known for having a variety of dinosaur bones and fossil fragments, and the group were digging to find something. They expected to find simple bone fragments, but instead they unearthed several full dinosaur vertebrae and smooth black bones.
"I thought it was pretty cool," said Donovan Dunn.
Watt said her nephew ran over to the group with the news that he had found something big in the dirt.
"It was just like, 'Oh!' and everybody was ecstastic and couldn't believe what was there," Watt said.
The family alerted state paleontologists so they could safely excavate the bones.
"It's also an articulated skeleton," said paleontologist James Kirkland. "That means all the bones are joined together. You can see the backbone just laid out on this animal."
Kirkland said the group did the right thing by alerting specialists to do the actual digging instead of trying to do it themselves. He said that any further exposure could have damaged the bones.
"They exposed bones, but they didn't pick anything up," he said.
Kirkland and other paleontologists believe that the discovery was made on Bureau of Land Management land, and he is trying to arrange for the family to go back to help unearth the discovery.
