Join the Great Basin Chapter of Utah Friends of Paleontology for a hybrid meeting Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 7:00 PM
If you wish to attend the meeting online, click here to register. A meeting link will be sent out the day before the meeting.
Our speaker will be paleontologist and author Christa Sadler who will talk about her brand new book: Dinosaur Frontier: Utah at the Dawn of the Cretaceous.
The Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation is a Utah original. Geologists initially defined the formation based on the perception that it had few, if any, dinosaur fossils, and it was largely ignored for decades. But the punch line of this story is that, over the past 30 years or so, discoveries from the Cedar Mountain Formation have more than doubled the number of dinosaur taxa from Utah. This one thin formation, found largely in southeastern Utah near Arches National Park and the San Rafael Swell, has singlehandedly filled in massive gaps in our understanding of this important time in the history of our planet.
Utah State Paleontologist Dr. James Kirkland has worked in the formation for nearly four decades, along with dozens of scientists in diverse fields, piecing together the Early Cretaceous ecosystems and landscapes of western North America, and how the inhabitants of those landscapes fit into a global picture of changing climate, evolution, and extinction. Until now, there has never been a book for a popular audience about this research and its significance. Dinosaur Frontier: Utah at the Dawn of the Cretaceous is that book, and author and presenter Christa Sadler will discuss both the formation that changed the face of Utah paleontology and the story of creating the book.
Christa Sadler studied paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, and received her MS in Earth Science from Northern Arizona University. She loves being out in the field with all the people she gets to interview for her books and spends as much time as possible volunteering with different crews. To make a living, she works as a river and wilderness guide, and teaches Earth Sciences in several different settings.
