'Extremely rare' intact Triassic Period fossils found near Bears Ears Monument

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SALT LAKE CITY — At the beginning of the Triassic Period, 251 million years ago, more than 90 percent of life-forms on the planet went extinct. The Great Dying, as it is called, allowed for the rise of new diversity of life, including mammals, sea creatures and the first dinosaurs, according to National Geographic.

Now, researchers have discovered what they believe could be the richest collection of Triassic Period fossils ever unearthed. The discovery, which was led by paleontologist Rob Gay, was made within the original boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument, a federal monument in San Juan County designated by then-President Barack Obama in 2016, according to an emailed statement.

President Donald Trump has since reduced the size of Bears Ears by 85 percent, more than a million acres. The 63-yard site where the fossils were discovered is no longer protected, Gay said in the statement.

The site, as Gay put it, “may be the densest area of Triassic period fossils in the nation, maybe the world. If this site can be fully excavated, it is likely we will find many other intact specimens, and quite possibly even new vertebrate species.”

The discovery began with the digging up of phytosaur fossils, a crocodile-like archosaur with cone-shaped teeth that preyed on land animals, turtles and shellfish, as noted by the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

Three phytosaur skulls were discovered on the site, Gay said, and are currently being examined at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm.

“It is extremely rare to find intact fossil skulls of specimens from this period,” Gay said.

Trump’s move to shrink Bears Ears has been a controversial one, with critics arguing that a lack of federal protection will allow private companies to dig or build on the geologically and ecologically rich land.

An additional concern raised by Gay is that, in light of the monument reduction, there is little to prevent looters from digging and collecting fossils without the proper permits. This was the case with one of the specimens Gay discovered that was missing a partial skull fragment, the paleontologist said.

“We did a little more digging before realizing this site had been looted by someone without a permit for this kind of fossil removal,” Gay said. The statement added that the skull fragment was looted before Bears Ears was designated a monument in 2016.

However, the fossil was surrendered by an unpermitted collector to federal officials in Arizona, Gay said.

“This may be one of the only times a recovered fossil has been traced all the way back to the location where it was looted,” he said.

At the Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists annual conference, where the Triassic fossil discovery was revealed, conference coordinator Tracy J. Thomson criticized Trump’s reduction of the monument and emphasized the value of the region to researchers.

“Within the paleontology community, the size of this site and the potentially large number of specimens buried there represent an extraordinary opportunity to expand our knowledge of species that lived during the Triassic period,” Thomson said. “There is an incredible amount of work yet to be done and we hope that paleontological sites like this one will get the protection they need before more of our prehistoric past is forever lost to looting or irreplaceably damaged by mining in the region.”

A slight majority of Utahns supported Trump’s decision to reduce the size of Bears Ears, according to an October 2017 poll from The Salt Lake Tribune and Hinckley Institute of Politics. Local politicians, including Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, supported its reduction and argued that the monument’s designation constituted federal overreach, KSL.com previously reported.