US Military picks millions-of-years-old fossil site for bombing practice range

[BurtWorm]

From Evolving Thoughts:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/military_might_versus_fossils.php

Military might versus fossils

Category: Evolution • General Science • Politics • Species and systematics
Posted on: May 28, 2007 8:58 AM, by John S. Wilkins

Denver Post is reporting that the US Army wants to use a major fossil site for bombing practice. The Picket Wire Canyonlands, in the Commanche National Grasslands, is included in a series of maps the Army has drawn up for increasing its ordinance ranges.

The landscape of southeast Colorado also crawls with history, but time may be running out on public access to the past as Fort Carson considers acquiring the land for war training.

This secluded valley is home to one of North America's richest dinosaurs finds - more than 1,300 individual tracks; 35 sites have yielded bones.

"The great thing about this site is that it's here to see, and it's free for the public," said U.S. Forest Service paleontologist Bruce Schumacher, leaning against a rock after wading across the Purgatoire River - the River of Lost Souls, as French explorers first called it.

Schumacher planted his bare feet near the beachball-sized tracks of a brontosaurus left 150 million years ago.

"The history here is just layered on itself," he said.

But every map proffered by the Army has included Picket Wire Canyonlands in the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

Karen Edge, Fort Carson's Piñon Canyon outreach coordinator, did not return telephone calls for comment on the future of the Canyonlands.

...

Americans who live in the region, or who merely prize fossils, should protest about this. It takes a lot longer to make a fossil than a war, as one of the Dino-L posters noted.

Late note: I'm told that the phone number for the Ft. Carson Colorado Commanding General's Hotline is: [phone]. I trust this is not a state secret.

[Javaman]

1. Bah! we's all knowds that dis here eirt is be only 6000 years old.

what's we be needed any of does dinersours bones anyway, days be gawds little prank upon us to keeps away the tricksters.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The irony is inescapable.

The dinosaurs are extinct. Now, we have the tools of our own extinction being used on the dinosaurs remains.