ESCALANTE, Utah — In November 2018, Taylor Barnette found himself on the ledge of a 76-million-year-old sandstone near the top of a steep face in southern Utah.
Barnette, who at the time was a volunteer for the Bureau of Land Management Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s paleontology program, noticed bone fragments littered all over the slope.
He had seen similar things on his various dinosaur site trips before, but he could tell this one was different.
He reported it to Paria River District (PRD) Paleontologist Dr. Alan Titus, who was encouraged to learn more.
The following June, a seasonal field tech for the PRD confirmed the site, naming it TAB-18-2 (T2 for short). “The site preserved a large theropod dinosaur, believed to possibly be a T-rex,” the BLM said.