Utah State University Eastern

Coprolites are preserved fecal material, also known as paleofeces. They are generally preserved in protected archaeological contexts via desiccation, though waterlogged and frozen specimens have been recovered. These biologically complex specimens can be examined for evidence of diet and medicinal use of plants and animals, as well as of the sex and genetic makeup of the depositing individual. They can also be directly radiocarbon‐dated, providing a temporal framework for specimens from disturbed contexts.

Several shark teeth have been collected from limestones in the marine-nonmarine transitional zone of the lower Cutler beds in the Shafer Basin near Moab, Utah. The shark teeth include the Pennsylvanian pet­alodontiform Petalodus ohioensis, which is the first described from the state, and the Permo-Carboniferous cladodontomorph Cladodus sp. The Petalodus specimens are compared with the holotype P. hastingsae Owen, P. acuminatus (Agassiz), P. ohioensis (Shafer), and P. alleghaniensis (Leidy). Several of these key taxa are illustrated with photographs for the first time.

I am a Navajo college student that grew up on the northern rim of the Navajo

ABSTRACT The braincase from the Upper Jurassic (lower Tithonian) Morrison Formation of the Carnegie Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument (Utah), which was assigned to the ankylopollexian iguanodontian ornithopod dinosaur Uteodon aphanoecetes (Carpenter and Wilson, 2008) is actually that of the dryosaurid iguanodontian Dryosaurus cf. D. altus (Marsh, 1878). The purported braincase autapomorphy of U. aphanoecetes, occipital condyle projects farther ventrally than basal tubera, is an artifact of damage to the latter structures in this specimen. The newly identified braincase of Dryosaurus Marsh, 1894, reveals features that are not easily observed in other specimens of this taxon, such as well-developed fossae on the anterior surfaces of the paroccipital processes and a spike-shaped parasphenoid that lacks the dorsal process seen in Dysalotosaurus Virchow, 1919. The distinction of this latter dryosaurid genus from Dryosaurus is here regarded as tentative. The removal of the braincase in question from the hypo...

ABSTRACT The Eulert pliosaurid remains (FHSM VP-321) housed at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History (Kansas, U.S.A.) include one of the world's best examples of a Cretaceous pliosaurid plesiosaur skull. The specimen's original assignment to Brachauchenius lucasi was based solely upon the skull (dorsal surface) and left lower jaw (lateral view) because the specimen was embedded in a plaster mount. The history of B. lucasi is similarly problematic, because the type and a referred skull were formerly visible only in ventral and dorsal views, respectively. Further preparation and comparison of these specimens reveal new data about the arrangement of cranial elements. The Eulert pliosaurid bears several distinct autapomorphies as compared with B. lucasi, including cranial proportions (pretemporal length of palate longer, shorter temporal fenestrae), configuration of skull roof elements (frontals participate in premaxilla-parietal suture, suture occurs further forward), and configuration of the palate (posterior vomers not masked by medial alar extensions of the palatines, caudal vomerian fenestrae positioned further posterior, long slit-like anterior pteryoid vacuity present). Furthermore, FHSM VP-321 possesses double-headed cervical ribs, a feature previously unknown in Cretaceous pliosaurids. This combination of characters merits separation of the Eulert pliosaurid and a referred specimen to a new taxon, Megacephalosaurus eulerti. The type and paratype skulls of M. eulerti are 1.5 m and 1.75 m in length, respectively, and thus 50% and 75% larger than the known 1-m-long skulls of B. lucasi, suggesting that M. eulerti may attain larger size than B. lucasi.

“What is history but a fable agreed upon.” So wrote Napoleon Bonaparte, a man considered by many to be a tactical genius and by others to be a bloody butcher. Reality lies somewhere between, part of the fable. Defined as “a narrative making a cautionary point . . . a story about legendary persons or exploits . . . [or] a falsehood,” the term fable characterizes, in a positive and a negative sense, the treatment of many historic episodes, including the Navajo Long Walk period.1 Much has been written of this time when the Navajo people, following what appears to be a fairly short resistance, surrendered in droves to the US military, collected at Fort Defiance and other designated sites, then moved in a series of “long walks” to Fort Sumner (Hweeldi) on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico.2 There was much that preceded these events. Stretching back to the beginning of Euro-American occupation of the Southwest, the Spanish initiated a slave trade against the “wild” or unsettled (non-Puebloan) Indians that pitted various groups against their neighbors. Two major players in the arena were the Utes and Navajos. They shared relatively few years of peace, remaining generally in a state of warfare that simmered somewhere between hostility and open conflict. As with so many colonial wars, the beginning of these tit-for-tat reprisals is lost to history, but its constancy is not. Spanning the Spanish, Mexican, and early territorial period of the American Southwest, the slave trade was a prime source of fuel for intertribal conflict and provided the owner of captive Indians with labor to enhance comfort and spur economic development.3 Much of what characterized this period of history and Navajo/Ute relations is comparable to what happened to other peoples in different settings.