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Ed Yeates reporting Want to step into a time machine and go back a 100 million years, like nobody has done before?
It's about to happen in a magnificent glass building in southeastern Utah.
In the rugged deserts of southeastern Utah, Reese Barrick and Jeff Bartlett are about to join their colleagues, digging away in a remote prehistoric graveyard.
This is a neat quarry site since the plant eating dinosaur bones here may give paleontologists a precise time line. How fast did they grow ? What plants did they eat?
Dr. Reese Barrick, College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum: "From almost infancy, an animal not more than two months old to an individual that's probably six months to a year. So we really have a spectacular sort of growth series."
The fossil timeline here will end up on display for everybody to see at the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum.
But something else is about to happen there - NOBODY has experienced before.
In its own right, this is still beautiful country. But it's desert - dry, barren - no trees. But 98 to 100 million years ago, the ocean would have been just over that plateau in front of me. And in back of me here - rivers, lakes, and lush green foliage.
Now - what if you could actually walk back into that scene. Let's get out of our quarry grubs - and go back to Price. When finished, this multi-million dollar structure will be a one of its kind attraction.
This is only a table top model - so with some special effects, let's miniaturize me to give some perspective. The remarkable glass building will be 50 feet high and will cover one half acre."
Gathered from around the world, plants genetically related to those that grew here 100 million years ago - will grow again inside this evolution center.
Dr. Reese Barrick, College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum: "Within about a year and a half or two, we'll be ready to transplant into our Mesozoic gardens and we'll be able to continue growing them until we have a very nice dinosaur ecology - replicated,"
A real, live dinosaur forest - just like it was back then! And amidst the foliage, some ancestral animals as well.
Construction on this new Evolution Center - begins next spring.
