Colorado’s Beach Front Property

    Chief Science Officer Log:  Stardate 15920.12

As the USS Tiburon was in orbit for a refit, myself Chief Science officer, chief communications officer and the chief of the marines beamed down for a bit of leave time. We beamed down to the state of Colorado and decided to take in a place called Dinosaur Ridge. It it located in the town of Morrison Colorado. As we were hiking on of the trails on the ridge we hiked down to the visitors center to gather more information about this place.

The first fossils that were discovered in the ridge were Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus. They were discovered by a man called Arthur Lakes who was a professor at the college. He found the fossils in 1877 and they were dated to be 150 million years old in a age called the “age of giants”. After Artur lakes discovered the fossil in the ridge line, a hundred years passed and more dinosaur activity were discovered in 1937 hikers discovered dinosaur tracks in the rocks. They found over 300 tracks and found out that they were alligator tracks. And more recently in 2009 some previous undiscovered tracks were found by a student and his teacher.

We also learned that most of Colorado was under water in a vast sea that stretched from the arctic ocean to the gulf of Mexico. The sea was considered a shallow sea only 800-900 meters deep but it had a variety of different species living in it. There were plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, sharks and primitive mollusks. Living around the sea were early forms of birds called hesperomis. They were small flightless birds that had more developed legd for swimming through the water.

As i concluded this months log entry, I am fascinated about the lifeforms that have come and gone from the earth, and what we may be missing just inches bellow the surface.