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About Cedar Mountain:
Because the Morrison Formation of the western United States is so huge--encompassing about 1.5 million square miles--paleontologists find it more convenient to discuss specific locations within this fossil-bearing bonanza, such as Dinosaur National Monument or Cedar Mountain. The latter is a stretch of sedimentary rocks bearing bones from the early to middle Cretaceous period, meaning the dinosaurs discovered here were separated in time by as much as 25 million years.
Oddly, although Cedar Mountain has been known to paleontologists since the mid-20th century, it wasn't actively explored for dinosaur remains until the 1990's. These digs revealed a large array of theropods, ankylosaurs and sauropods; tellingly, the remains dated to 100 million years ago bear a distinct resemblance to fossils from Mongolia, thus confirming the theory that North America drifted away from western Europe, and toward Asia, during the late Cretaceous period.
Though it's much smaller than its parent Morrison Formation, the Cedar Mountain formation is itself fairly huge, encompassing at least four smaller "member" formations: Yellow Cat, Poison Strip, Ruby Ranch and Mussentuchit (the last retaining its old Native American name).
