Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre (85 km2) retreat and education center run by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), located close to the village of Abiquiu in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico.
Sandstone cliffs along the Kitchen Mesa Trail, in Ghost Ranch.
The last private owner of the Ghost Ranch was Arthur Newton Pack, who donated the ranch to the Presbyterian Church. Arthur Pack was also the publisher of Nature magazine and opened the Ghost Ranch Lodge in Tucson, Arizona, and contributed to the creation of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.
Ghost Ranch includes a famous paleontological site preserving Triassic dinosaurs. Fossil bones were found here as early as 1885. In 1947 the paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert documented the discovery of over a thousand well-preserved fossilized skeletons of a small Triassic dinosaur called Coelophysis in a quarry here.[1] In 2007, fossil remains of Dromomeron romeri, one of the archaic group of animals called "basal dinosauromorphs," were found in the Hayden Quarry.[2]
References[]
- ^ O'Connor, Anahad. - "E. H. Colbert, 96, Dies; Wrote Dinosaur Books ". - New York Times. - November 25, 2001.
- ^ Herrmann, Andrew. - "Grad student finds 'pre-dinosaur' - Part of team to discover 210 million-year-old species in N.M.". - Chicago Sun-Times. - July 20, 2007.
— Mullen, William. - "Fossil prompts new dinosaur theory - Discovery is changing conventional wisdom on how quickly beasts came to rule Earth". - Chicago Tribune. - July 20, 2007.
— Gerber, Marty. - "Fossils Show Dinosaurs Coexisted with ancestors". - Santa Fe New Mexican. - July 20, 2007.