Fruita, Colorado Riggs and crew found nearly two thirds of an "Apatosaurus excelsus" skeleton (commonly known as a Brontosaurus) on the northeast side of Dinosaur Hill, in Fruita. This is still considered to be one of the finest specimens known. Later, other sauropod bones were also found, which eventually led to the landmark's name. The animals were from the late Jurassic Age (150 million years ago) and within the Morrison Formation. Fossils of the "Fruitadens" (a heterodontosaurid dinosaur), the world's smallest known plant-eating dinosaur, were first found in the Fruita Paleontological Area (within the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area) off Kings View
Dinosaur State Park and Arboretum a new state office building. The site opened as Dinosaur State Park in 1968, the same year its dinosaur trackway was memorialized as a Registered National Landmark. The park's geodesic dome (see picture at right) encloses some 500 tracks while another 1,500 remain buried for preservation. The tracks are from the early Jurassic period and were made over 200 million years ago on what must have been a sandy shore of a lake, by a carnivorous dinosaur similar to "Dilophosaurus". The tracks bear the name "Eubrontes", the term for fossilized footprints invented by geologist Edward Hitchcock. The tracks range from