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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here,

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Speaker 1: Utah is prime dino hunting country. Of fossils representing more

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Speaker 1: than one hundred and fifteen dinosaur species have been unearthed

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Speaker 1: inside the state's borders. Most of these species weren't identified

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Speaker 1: until recently, as in within the past twenty nine years. Truly,

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Speaker 1: this is a golden age for paleontology in the Rocky

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Speaker 1: Mountain West. One of the beasts found there, indeed, one

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Speaker 1: that seems to be totally unique to Grand County, Utah,

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Speaker 1: is the Utah raptor, a carnivorous dinosaur with frightful claws.

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Speaker 1: It lived around one hundred and thirty five million years

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Speaker 1: ago and boasts a few Jurassic Park connections, as the

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Speaker 1: name raptor suggests. Yet, by various estimates, Utah Raptor could

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Speaker 1: grow to be fifteen, eighteen, or perhaps even twenty three

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Speaker 1: feet long. That's from about four and a half to

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Speaker 1: seven meters. That could make this dino a whole lot

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Speaker 1: bigger than any raptor in Steven Spielberg's filmography. The Utah

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Speaker 1: Raptor was named the state's official dinosaur in twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 1: But this eventual home of the Utah Jazz basketball team

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Speaker 1: and the Great Salt Lake looked very different. When Utah

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Speaker 1: Raptor reigned about one hundred and thirty five million years ago,

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Speaker 1: the Jurassic period of Earth's geologic history was coming to

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Speaker 1: a close. It was followed by the Cretaceous period, which

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Speaker 1: lasted until a mass extinction event about sixty six million

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Speaker 1: years ago that killed off the last of the dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: except for birds. Utah Raptor lived early in the Cretaceous.

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Speaker 1: At that time, the face of Utah was transforming, thanks

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Speaker 1: in no small part to everyone's favorite pretzel topping salt.

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Speaker 1: Without it, we might not know that utah Raptor ever existed. Okay, along,

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Speaker 1: before even the first dinosaurs showed up, there was a

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Speaker 1: deep basin along what's now the Utah Colorado Border. Seawater

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Speaker 1: flowed in and as it evaporated, it left behind giant

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Speaker 1: piles of salt that were literally thousands of feet tall

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Speaker 1: that is hundreds and hundreds of meters. A rocky debris

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Speaker 1: later covered up those salt beds. As time passed, the

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Speaker 1: now underground cache of salt started getting deformed by this

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Speaker 1: heavy overlying material. Parts of Utah's terrain were raised up

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Speaker 1: by the shifting salt, other spots dipped down. Grand County

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Speaker 1: was one of those places where this movement or salt

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Speaker 1: tectonics created big depressions across the landscape, and in the

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Speaker 1: early Cretaceous these became the home of vibrant ponds and lakes.

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Speaker 1: It was a perfect environment for future fossils. A North

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Speaker 1: America was a fairly dry place in those days, an

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Speaker 1: erosion was rampant, but here the inflow of water and

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Speaker 1: sediment to these low elevation lakes did a good job

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Speaker 1: of covering up and preserving the bodies of the animals

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Speaker 1: that died there, animals like the Utah raptor. The two

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Speaker 1: oldest assemblages of Cretaceous dinosaurs in the entire North American

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Speaker 1: fossil record are both preserved in Grand County rocks. For

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Speaker 1: the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works,

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Speaker 1: spoke via email with Jim Kirkland, Utah's official state paleontologist.

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Speaker 1: He explained about one hundred and thirty five million years ago,

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Speaker 1: local subsidence in Grand County uniquely preserved a series of

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Speaker 1: lakes and ponds teeming with lungfish, chain mail covered bony fish,

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Speaker 1: and spiny sharks. Utah raptor stocked iguanodonts and young sauropods,

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Speaker 1: while the heavily spined and armored gastonia looked on. Iguanodonts

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Speaker 1: were beaked animals, Sauropods were long necked giants, and Gastonia

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Speaker 1: was a type of armor plated dinosaur built like a

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Speaker 1: living tank. All of them had vegetarian diets, though flowering

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Speaker 1: plants hadn't developed yet. Most of the vegetation there consisted

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Speaker 1: of conifers and ferns. A utah raptor was the biggest

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Speaker 1: type of raptor, with an estimated weight of about six

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Speaker 1: hundred to eight hundred pounds or two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: to three fifty kilos. They would have been about the

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Speaker 1: size of a large black bear or a small grizzly.

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Speaker 1: As for the infamous velociraptor, it likely weighed in at

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Speaker 1: just eighty five pounds or so about forty kilos. A

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Speaker 1: native of Late Cretaceous Asia, the real velociraptor was a

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Speaker 1: small bodied predator far removed from its Hollywood name sake.

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Speaker 1: The raptors in the Jurassic Park franchise were inspired by

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Speaker 1: larger species, but like all of these relatives, utah raptor

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Speaker 1: had an outsized, sickle shaped claw on each foot. The

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Speaker 1: animals held these claws upright as they walked. The claws

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Speaker 1: had a core of bone measuring up to eight point

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Speaker 1: seven inches that's twenty two centimeters long, and that's just

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Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. Like modern eagles, utah raptor

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Speaker 1: must have had keratin sheets covering its clawbones, which would

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Speaker 1: have made these weapons even bigger than their naked skeletons

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Speaker 1: suggest a utah raptor's arsenal was rounded out with long

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Speaker 1: claw tipped arms and a mouthful of serrated teeth, all

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Speaker 1: the better for tearing flesh technically. The first utah raptor

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Speaker 1: fossils on record were discovered by paleontologist Jim Jensen of

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Speaker 1: Brigham Young University in nineteen seventy five. However, and nobody

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Speaker 1: knew quite what to make of these until a team

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Speaker 1: led by Kirkland dug up another set of raptor bones

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. A utah raptor got its official

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Speaker 1: name when Kirkland and his colleagues published a paper introducing

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Speaker 1: the animal in nineteen ninety three, which fittingly is the

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Speaker 1: same year that Jurassic Park was stomped into theaters. The

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Speaker 1: creature's full scientific name utah Raptor Ostrom Mazie salutes raptor

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Speaker 1: expert John Ostrom and animatronics creator Chris Mays, who helped

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Speaker 1: the research effort. The scientists did consider calling the dino

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Speaker 1: utah Raptor Spielbergey after a certain movie director, but that

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Speaker 1: never came to pass. Utah Raptor remains are known from

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Speaker 1: four different localities across Grant County. One of these sites

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Speaker 1: has yielded a nine ton sandstone megablock filled with assorted

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Speaker 1: dinosaur bones. According to researchers, that's probably what's left of

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Speaker 1: a Cretaceous quicksand type pit. Some iguanadont bones are included

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Speaker 1: in the mix, but the real highlight is the raptor material.

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Speaker 1: Kirkland says that the block has yielded fossils from dozens

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Speaker 1: of individual utah raptor, and in a stroke of luck,

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Speaker 1: many of those were babies or juveniles when they died.

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Speaker 1: That could bring us a few steps closer to understanding

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Speaker 1: how this fearsome predator grew up. Today's episode is based

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Speaker 1: on the article utah Raptor the Salty Saga of a

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Speaker 1: Killer Dinosaur on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how

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Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For

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Speaker 1: four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Yes