page_title: Natural History Museum of Utah
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Natural History Museum of Utah / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The George Thomas Building, shown here photographed in 2008 when it still was home of the Utah Museum of Natural History, at the University of Utah. In 2011 the Museum moved to a completely new building. The move also resulted in a change of name to the "Natural History Museum of Utah". Français&#160;: Le bâtiment George Thomas (George Thomas Building), photographié ici en 2008 alors qu'il contenait encore le Muséum d'Histoire naturelle d'Utah (Utah Museum of Natural History), un musée faisant partie de l'Université d'Utah. En 2011 ce musée a emménagé dans un autre bâtiment, entièrement construit à cette fin. Avec le changement de bâtiment le musée a aussi subit une modification dans son nom officiel&#160;: de Utah Museum of Natural History il est passé à s'appeler Natural History Museum of Utah.
context_page_description: The Natural History Museum of Utah is a museum located in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The museum shows exhibits of natural history subjects, with an emphasis on Utah and the Intermountain West. The mission of the museum is to illuminate the natural world and the place of humans within it. The new building, named the Rio Tinto Center, opened in November 2011. The museum is part of the University of Utah and located in the University's Research Park.
context_section_description: The museum was conceived in 1959, when the University of Utah faculty committee decided to consolidate natural history collections from around its campus. The museum was established as the Utah Museum of Natural History on the University of Utah campus in 1963 by the Utah State Legislature. It opened in 1969 in the former George Thomas Library and included specimens from the Deseret Museum as well as from the Charles Nettleton Strevell Museum that was located in the old Lafayette School on South Temple Street from 1939 until 1947.
  The paleontology collections acquired a very important amount of new collected specimens during the 1960s, particularly fossilized remains of dinosaurs. It all began when a young local paleontologist called James Henry Madsen Jr. obtained his Master of Science in 1959 in the University of Utah. The following year, as of 1960, Madsen was hired as an assistant for Professor William Lee Stokes of the Princeton University, who at that time performed the dauntless project to extensively dig the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. Since the 1920s it had been firmly established by geologists that this quarry is one of the most important paleontological sites ever found in the United States, and still in the early 1960s literally tens of thousands of disarticulated dinosaur bones were buried in the rock, awaiting to be excavated. Because the bone bed was so vast and contained a so huge quantity of fossilized bones (mainly from Allosaurus fragilis), it seemed obvious to Stokes and Madsen that it was literally impossible for a single unique institution to dig up a number of specimens being realistically representative of the overall total. To accomplish this task, or at least a reasonable part of it, Stokes and Madsen founded the "University of Utah Cooperative Dinosaur Project", thank to initial funds allowed by the University of Utah and its Department of Geology. The project worked for 16 years in close collaboration not only with museums and institutions within the USA but also with prestigious international museums and research centers. Since financial assistance was brought by all the institutions who had participated in the project, the Dinosaur Project granted them casts or even original composite specimens of the dinosaurs found in the quarry.
  In the running time of the "Cooperative Dinosaur Project" (from 1960 to 1976), literally tons of fossilized bones were dug up from the quarry, numerous remains of species as famous as Camarasaurus, Camptosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Stegosaurus and, of course, Allosaurus, among others (Allosaurus is by far the most represented species, with 44-46 individuals found). In addition to these already known species, two new species were discovered and named: Stokesosaurus (in 1974) and Marshosaurus (in 1976), whose holotypes are preciously preserved in the Natural History Museum of Utah. In 1976 the University of Utah stopped the project. To continue financing his research, Madsen founded Dinolab, a company that casted and sold skeletons of dinosaurs to museums, institutions or private buyers. Madsen died in 2009 and Dinolab disappeared in 2014, but thank to the "University of Utah Cooperative Dinosaur Project" and Madsen's excavations in the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Natural History Museum of Utah possesses nowadays on display the biggest collection in the world of Allosaurus skeletons, among some additional dinosaur skeletal mounts belonging to other species.
  In 1963 Dr. Jesse D. Jennings, a professor and archaeologist was appointed director of the museum. The "Utah Museum of Natural History" opened to the public in 1969. Jennings was the director for 10 years and in 1973, Don Hague, the museum's curator and first paid employee became the director. Hague led the museum for nearly 20 years, retiring in 1992. Dr. Sarah George is the current director.
  In 2011 the museum moved from the old George Thomas Library location at 1390 Presidents Circle into the Rio Tinto Center, in the University of Utah's Research Park 301 Wakara Way, Salt La
caption: The George Thomas Building, shown here photographed in 2008 when it still was home of the museum on the University of Utah's President's Circle.
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