The Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum is a museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 in Vernal

Vernal, Utah

Vernal, Uintah County's largest city, is located in eastern Utah near the Colorado State Line, and 175 miles east of Salt Lake City. It is bordered on the north by the Uinta Mountains, one of the few mountains ranges in the world which lie in an east-west rather than the usual north to south...

, Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

State park

The Utah Field House of Natural History State Park consists of a 22000 square feet (2,043.9 m²) structure on a 2 acres (8,093.7 m²) property. The museum displays prehistoric

Prehistory

Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...

 geological

Geology

Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

, anthropological

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, and natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 items found near the Uinta Mountains

Uinta Mountains

The Uinta Mountains are a high chain of mountains in northeastern Utah and extreme northwestern Colorado in the United States. A subrange of the Rocky Mountains, they are unusual for being the highest range in the contiguous United States running east to west, and lie approximately east of Salt...

 and within the Uinta Basin.

The park has a picnic

Picnic

In contemporary usage, a picnic can be defined simply as a pleasure excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors , ideally taking place in a beautiful landscape such as a park, beside a lake or with an interesting view and possibly at a public event such as before an open air theatre performance,...

 area, and camping is available at nearby Red Fleet State Park

Red Fleet State Park

Red Fleet State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, featuring a reservoir and a fossil trackway of dinosaur footprints. The park is located north of Vernal.-Geography:...

 and Steinaker State Park

Steinaker State Park

Steinaker State Park is a state park and reservoir of Utah, USA, located north of Vernal in Uintah County, Utah.Steinaker State Park opened to the public in 1964. It lies at an elevation of in northeastern Utah, south of the Uinta Mountains. The climate is arid with hot summers and cold winters....

.

Museum features

The Utah Field House of Natural History contains a rotunda

Rotunda (architecture)

A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...

, three exhibit halls, a classroom

Classroom

A classroom is a room in which teaching or learning activities can take place. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, including public and private schools, corporations, and religious and humanitarian organizations...

, a theater, and an outdoor garden

Garden

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...

.

The Geology Hall displays algae

Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

, dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

, and mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

 fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s spanning more than 600 million years of history. There are also artistic representations of these life forms along with paintings of the geology of the region.

The Anthropology Hall features the human history of the area. This includes Fremont Indian

Fremont culture

The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah where the first Fremont sites were discovered. The Fremont River itself is named for John Charles Frémont, an American explorer. It inhabited...

 artifacts along with reproductions of local petroglyph

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s. There are also more modern Ute

Ute Tribe

The Ute are an American Indian people now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico . The name of the state of...

 handicraft

Handicraft

Handicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...

s and other cultural items.

The Natural History Hall contains examples of animal life native to the area, arranged along a mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

 of the local environment spanning from the higher altitudes of the Uinta Mountains down to the lower Uinta Basin.

Outside the museum is the Dinosaur Garden, which features 17 full-sized prehistoric animal replica

Replica

A replica is a copy closely resembling the original concerning its shape and appearance. An inverted replica complements the original by filling its gaps. It can be a copy used for historical purposes, such as being placed in a museum. Sometimes the original never existed. For example, Difference...

s from the Pennsylvanian

Pennsylvanian

The Pennsylvanian is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the younger of two subperiods of the Carboniferous Period. It lasted from roughly . As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Pennsylvanian are well identified, but the exact date of the start and end are uncertain...

 through the Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 epochs on the Geological time scale. Highlights include a twenty-foot Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...

, a Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus is a genus of armored stegosaurid dinosaur. They lived during the Late Jurassic period , some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America. In 2006, a specimen of Stegosaurus was announced from Portugal, showing that they were present in Europe as well...

, and two Moschops

Moschops

Moschops is an extinct genus of therapsid that lived in the Late Permian, around 255 million years ago. Therapsids were proto-mammals , which were the dominant land animals. Five metres long, Moschops was the largest land animal of its time, a herbivore preyed on by other therapsids...

. The majority of these items were created by sculptor

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 Elbert Porter, and were purchased in 1977 for the Field House. The newest addition, obtained by the museum in 1993, is a model of a Coelophysis

Coelophysis

Coelophysis , meaning "hollow form" in reference to its hollow bones , is one of the earliest known genera of dinosaur...

 made by artist David Thomas.

History

In 1945, the Utah State Legislature

Utah State Legislature

The Utah State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. It is a bicameral body, comprising the Utah House of Representatives, with 75 Representatives, and the Utah Senate, with 29 State Senators...

 approved building a state-owned natural history museum in Vernal. This was a result of efforts by the local Lions Club

Lions Clubs International

Lions Clubs International is a secular service organization with over 44,500 clubs and more than 1,368,683 members in 191 countries around the world founded by Melvin Jones Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, United States, the organization aims to meet the needs of communities on a local and...

and others. This museum was to house and display fossil remains of ancient life, along with other natural history items. Funding was made available in 1946, and the museum opened in 1948. Since that time, it has hosted millions of visitors.

External links

• Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum