The famous bone beds of the Morrison Formation, whose rocks are exposed from Wyoming down through the red rock region of the American Southwest, have yielded one of the most complete pictures of any ancient vertebrate ecosystem in the world. After more than a century of exploration, the Morrison continues to yield new discoveries about a time so different from our own that it almost seems imaginary. Aimed at the general reader, Jurassic West tells the story of the life of this ancient world as scientists have so far been able to reconstruct it. The book recounts the discovery of many important Late Jurassic dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. But dinosaurs comprise barely a third of the more than 90 types of vertebrates known from the Formation, which include crocodiles and turtles, frogs and salamanders, dinosaurs and mammals, clams and snails, and ginkgoes, ferns, and conifers.

Author Biography

John Foster is Director of the Museum of Moab in Moab, Utah. He served for thirteen years as Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of Western Colorado and adjunct faculty at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. He has worked in Cambrian deposits in several areas of the western states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and South Dakota. He is author of Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America (IUP, 2014).