Great Basin Museum

Articles and Video Lectures

Articles

That Ugly Gray Metal Called Beryllium

“You notice the first of these as soon as you pick it up; it’s just two-thirds the density of aluminum. At the same time it’s six times stiffer than steel.”

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Amaranth and the Fremont

“These plants grow extremely well in cool dry climates such as we find in Millard County.”

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A Possible Nineteenth Century Conspiracy Theory?

“The United States is preparing for war. The supposed enemy is a dictator ruling with absolute authority over a nation of religious fundamentalists who think that God will…

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C.D. Walcott and Millard County’s Wheeler Shale

“It is impossible to over-estimate the influence and prestige of Walcott: Hintze calls him ‘the father of Cambrian paleontology and stratigraphy in North America.’”……

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Early Man in Millard County

“9000 years ago it was the shoreline of Lake Bonneville, a place where ancient man lived, built simple shelters, and harvested the bounty of the surrounding marsh-lands and…

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Earthquakes and the Great Basin

“Though harmful and feared, earthquakes are necessary for our earthly existence.“

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Etienne Provost

“[. . .] he never knew; he died a year later, oblivious to the fact that a town out West had been given his name.”

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Extinction: An Archaeological perspective

“ [. . .] as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds, and reptiles are beyond recovery and at the verge of extinction right now.“

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Great Basin Museum Receives a Major Fossil and Mineral Donation

“Some of the fossils are rare, including some large, beautiful examples of Pennsylvanian age, tree bark, roots, rootlets, leaves and reproductive cones from extinct Lycopod…

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Human Trafficking in Human Beings on the Old Spanish Trail

“On January 31, 1852 the Utah territorial legislature passed a law prohibiting the slave trade.”

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Millard County’s Banded Gneiss

“Through all this, some 1.75 billion years, they lay, waiting their eventual return to the surface.“

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P.E. Connor and Brigham Young meet at Cove Fort

“To say that Colonel Connor and President Young didn’t get along is a significant understatement.”

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Sam Gilson and the Gilson Mountains

“Gilson’s goal seems to have been ambitious, to reach to the very top: He was after none other than Brigham Young himself.”

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An Errant Knight, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Scipio A. Kenner and Brigham Young

“Apparently the interrogation didn’t go as well as it might, or at least it was not to Young’s satisfaction, for after a short pause he said: ‘Are you a Mormon?’, ‘Well,’…

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The Best Preserved Dinosaur You are Ever Likely to See

“I have never been able to look at it without thinking that surely it must have died just recently; maybe last summer […]”

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The Cambrian Explosion

“It was an expression of life unlike anything which has occurred before or after, an explosion of sorts, ‘Nature’s Big Bang.’”

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Terry Alphonse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Great Debate of 1870

“Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy – Pratt vs. Newman?”

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The Mountain Meadows Massacre

“Worst of all, some reports indicate that most of the killing was done, execution style, by the Mormon Militia after the emigrants had agreed to accept protection offered…

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Ken Lund from Reno, NV, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Orderville Community of 1877

“Immediately a scandal was born.”

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The Promontory Reinactment

“[…] when Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific stepped forward to drive the last spike, ‘He missed.’”

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Utah’s Connection to the Planet Mars

“In January 2004, an alien spacecraft from Earth roared through that thin Martian air and crash-landed on Meridiani Planum.”

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Photo of Dinosaur Jim Jenson

“Dinosaur Jim” – Famous Millard County Resident

“The remarkable success which came to Jim resulted in frequent mention in the literature, both scholarly and popular, and appearances in almost every dinosaur documentary…

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Video Lectures

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Campsites of the 1776 Dominguez Escalante Expedition with Owen Neilsen

Domingues & Escalante Expedition, 30 Sept 1776 First Exploration of Millard County Utah campsites as they appear today (2017). By Owen & Linda Nielsen. These Catholic Franciscan Priests came from Santa Fe, New Mexico to explore Utah in 1776. They explored a route to Monterey, CA. Site Scipio, UT, Pahvant Butte Oct 1, 1776. Reference Domingues, Escalante Journal. Univ of Utah Press 1995, Edited by Ted J Warner, Translated by Fray Angelico Chavez. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 10 Sep 2017.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Invertebrate Fossils with Owen & Linda Neilsen

Owen and Linda Neilsen presentation of some invertebrate fossils in the Great Basin Museum in Delta, UT. Includes Pycnodonte oysters, mosasaur, conglomerate, banded gneiss (1.75 B yrs old), Algal mats, stromatolites and snails, ordovician nautiloid, Elrathia Kingii trilobites, anomalocaris. He recommends to read Stephen Jay Goulds Wonderful Life. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 26 Jun 2016.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Fossil Mountain with Owen Nielsen

Fossil Mountain, Millard County UT, Owen Nielsen Geology Lecture. A description of the geological layers in the fossil mountain and a sample of the diverse fossils in the Kanosh shale layer. Written and narrated by Owen Neilsen of Great Basin Museum. Assisted by Linda Neilsen. Video by Kent Stewart. A description of the geological layers in Fossil Mountain. Shows a sample of the diverse fossils in the Kanosh shale layer. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 31 Jul 2014.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Gunnison Massacre of 1853 with Owen Neilsen and Jeneal Young

Gunnison Massacre of 1853 in Millard County, Utah USA History Lecture by Owen Nielsen and Jeneal Young of the Great Basin Museum. Shot on location west of Deseret and Hinckley, UT by Kent Stewart during July 2014. Captain John W. Gunnison survey party had 8 men massacred by Pahvant Indians in retaliation for their mistreatment by some white settlers in a California immigrant wagon train. There were 6 survivors. Includes a photo of Frank Thomas's mural in the County Fairgrounds. Mormons were implicated in the Massacre. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 31 Jul 2014.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Geology of Leamington/Fool Creek Pass Canyon with Owen Neilsen

Owen Neilsen describes the geology onsite in Fool Creek Pass Canyon in Millard County, UT. Canyon Range Mountains, Caddy Canyon Quartsite 700 Million, Mutual formation 585 Million, Canyon Range Conglomerate, North Horn Formation, Flagstaff Formation. Video by Kent Stewart 9 Sept 2013. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 15 Oct 2013.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Geology of the Lake Bonneville Shoreline with Owen Neilsen

Owen stands on the ancient shoreline of Lake Bonneville north east of Leamington Utah on the Gilson Mountains and describes the shoreline benches. Lake Bonneville was a large Ice Age freshwater lake which covered much of Utah about 20,000 years ago. It reached a maximum elevation of 5170 ft and was 654 ft deep at Sevier Lake playa. The lake drained halfway 14,500 years ago into the Snake River in Idaho and the level dropped 350 ft and stabilized at the Provo level 4790 ft. When the weight of lake water was gone, some of the land rebounded and the some shorelines are now higher than original. References: Geology of Millard County Utah by Lehi F. Hintze and Fitzhugh D. Davis (2003) and Interpreting the Earth by Robert R Compton, (1977). Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 23 Nov 2013.

Great Basin Museum Lectures: Fossils of Cambrian Snails and Orodovician Stromatolite with Owen Neilsen

Owen Neilsen shows samples of Cambrian snails and Orodovician stromatolite fossils in Millard County. These are the Notch peak formation rocks from 515 million years ago. At that time this landmass was near the earths equator and a tropical area. The snails could not handle high salt levels. As the salt level increased, the fossils from 5 million years later have only stromatolites a form of algae, cyano bacteria. These types of bacteria contributed to producing the high oxygen levels in the atmosphere that we rely on today. Video description and upload by Jerry Finlinson, 25 Dec 2013.