The USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum Director, Dr. Tim Riley was happy to come into Castle Radio to discuss how things are going, the new visitor center, and the current exhibit.

The museum has just finished up its busy tourist season as Dr. Riley explains, “Things are great. We’ve sort of passed our peak visitation season at the end of the summer and everyone going back to school but the students are coming back to USU Eastern and we’re thrilled to have that audience available to us as well. Everything is going really well; we’ve got a lot of really fun things happening currently at the museum as well as some future plans.” This includes a new visitor center and a new exhibit for community members and tourists to enjoy.

The Visitor Center has been in the works for some time so to see it finally completed and ready to open is a great accomplishment. “The goal with the county and Price City and USU was to bring the Visitor Center back to a more accessible location than where it currently is in the Administration Building over on 100 North. So the goal was, as you said, took a while, in terms of getting everybody on the same page, and getting an agreement signed, was to build a Visitor Center in the lobby of the museum. So it’s primary up on the southside of the lobby and then there’s a desk that will be occupied on the weekends, with somebody to help visitors to the area,” explained Dr. Riley. This will be a great addition to the museum and officials were excited to work with the Tourism Office with the specifics.

The newest exhibit entitled Horns & Tusks is now open and there has been a lot of buzz about the show. “This one is as you said Horns & Tusks, it’s about Ceratops dinosaurs, again big words, we can think about a Triceratops, ceratopsians are dinosaurs like that, they have these big frills on their heads. Ceratopsians and the evolution bizarre headgear. So that’s half of it focused on ceratopsians dinosaurs and the reason for that focus is that in the last 20 years or so, five new species have been discovered primarily in the Grand Staircase Escalante area,” stated Dr. Riley. The other half of the exhibit is primarily devoted to mammals such as big horn sheep, ice age walrus, and other animals.

To learn more about the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum can visit their website at https://eastern.usu.edu/museum/