Today's speaker was Dr Jerry Harris, the Director of Paleontology and Associate Professor at Dixie State College and the Scientific Advisor to the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. He was born at a very early age in Chicago and has, since then, bounced around the country (schlepping a keen interest in dinosaurs with him), living in Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, Dallas, Albuquerque, and Philadelphia before landing in St. George. He received his B.A. in Geoscience from the University of Colorado, M.S. from Southern Methodist University, and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Jerry is currently involved in research on fossils from China, Argentina, and (of course!) St. George.
Dr Harris shared with us the vision of the Dinosaur Discovery Site and their goal of adding additional exhibits. They achieved a major milestone with the addition of Scelidosaurus (known by only a handful of people as the Jinksosaurus).
"Since it was first discovered in 1851, only about a dozen, mostly incomplete specimens of this dinosaur had been found, but in 2000, the same year that the tracks were discovered at Johnson Farm, a virtually complete skeleton was discovered in England. U
nlike most dinosaur bones that are found, this fossil's hundreds of armor plates and spikes are preserved in their life positions, providing extraordinary details about how this dinosaur looked. St. George is the only place anywhere in the Hemisphere that the 11-foot long Scelidosaurus replica has been on display, and it was able to come to the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm because of a generous donation from local lawyers Virginius "Jinks" and Barbara Anne Dabney. Come see a truly unique specimen as well as the other remarkable fossils at the site!" (visit their
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