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St. George • A premier southwestern Utah fossil quarry threatened with extinction by the planned construction of an electric power station will no longer go the way of the dinosaur. A week before the May 1 deadline for excavation of the fossil-rich, Jurassic period site to end, St.
George city officials pulled the plug on the construction of the substation, thus extending a lifeline to the three-quarter-acre quarry regarded as one of the most important dinosaur track areas in North America. Instead, the city will build the substation on less fossil-laden land just south of the quarry, on municipal property across the street from St. George’s Dinosaur Discovery Site museum at 2180 E.
Riverside Drive. “We owe the city massive praise for working with us and deciding to relocate the station to protect this fossil site,” said Andrew Milner, lead paleontologist and curator of the museum who is overseeing excavation efforts. Even though the excavation at the quarry ended April 30 as planned, scientists and volunteers will no longer have to forever abandon extracting fossils, teeth, bones and footprints at the site, according to Milner.
Instead, they can rest up during the area’s withering summer heat and resume unearthing paleontological treasures at the quarry at a more leisurely pace in the fall. Last-minute reprieve Milner said city officials opted for the new location after he met with Mayor Michele Randall and city staff to talk about the impressive finds they were unearthing and to ask for more time to excavate before construction on the station began. In switching locations for the substation, St.
George spokesperson David Cordero said city officials were excited by the discoveries found at the quarry. “We wanted to be as supportive as we possibly could while also maintaining the location for the substation in that general area [near the original quarry site] to handle the loads,” he said. “We are thrilled to be able to work with them on this.
It’s a win-win.” Hurricane volunteer Alli Gholdston was one of many workers at the quarry who were ecstatic over the last-minute reprieve when they heard the news. “When we found out we would now have plenty of time to dig through this site, it gave us all such a sense of relief,” she said.
“We could work a bit slower and be much more thorough.” Gholdston is one of 750 volunteers from all across the country and as far away as Canada and Europe to work the quarry once news about the substation’s original location surfaced and the headlong rush to excavate the site began in March. What makes the site so vital, according to scientists, is many of the fossils found at the quarry date back 200 million years to the start of the Jurassic period and the end of the Triassic period, the latter of which featured a mass extinction that killed 75% of life on Earth and led to dinosaurs becoming the planet’s dominant species.
Jurassic jackpot (Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) Volunteers work at the St George dinosaur site on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. By Milner’s count, workers have excavated and inventoried 1,055 specimens since the excavation began. Perhaps more important than the quantity is the quality of what has been found.
“We have found four dinosaur bones so far,” Milner said. “We now think we have potentially found three different species of sharks that are new to science. We won’t know until we start prepping the specimens.
” Other bone and fossil finds include what could be two new species of palaeoniscoids , an extinct group of ray-finned fish, and two new species of Coelacanth s, an ancient lobe-finned fish that grew up to six feet in length. Also uncovered are four potential new species of semionotid fish, a dietary staple of dinosaurs that roamed and swam the area. Milner said the prevalence of fish bones and fossils at the bone-dry quarry is because it was once situated on the shores of ancient Lake Whitmore, a massive prehistoric expanse of water that covered everything between St.
George and the Grand Canyon. “We also know we have four new kinds of meat-eating dinosaurs at the site – two small ones and two large ones,” he said. “The large ones were between 15 and 20 feet long and would have produced the big three-toed Eubrontes tracks that we are finding.
" Gholdston is especially enamored with the partial fish jaws she dug up. Topping Cedar City volunteer Nathan Martin’s list is the three-inch dinosaur tooth he extracted last Friday. For his part, Milner is enthused about all the new volunteers and fresh faces.
“We have amassed quite a team of volunteers who live in the area and now have some serious skills that can help us with this site, the prep lab and to do field work elsewhere,” he said. (Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) Paleontologist Andrew Milner shows off a dinosaur tooth found embedded in a rock at a St. George dinosaur site, Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Volunteers are racing to extract fossils at the site before construction begins on a power substation. Between now and when work resumes on the quarry in September, Milner will oversee efforts to sort through all the material he and others have collected. As for construction on the substation that was originally slated for May, Codero, the city spokesman, said that won’t commence in its new location until later this year.
St. George owns roughly 20 acres in the area, which includes the quarry, the new substation location and the museum. The nonprofit DinosaurAH!torium Foundation operates the facility, which attracts 50,000 visitors a year.
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