On Saturday, 75 million years later, a handful of people had the opportunity to see the skull of one of the dinosaurs protruding from a ridge in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Alan Titus explained the significance of the sight.

"It's a fossilized bag of bones with the guts rotted out," said Titus, a paleontologist for the monument who discovered the fossilized skull in September 2003.

He said the find is significant because of the preservation of the skin, a rare find.

"With skin, we can start putting the animal together," said Titus as the group examined the dimpled texture of what was once the dinosaur's flesh.

After the giant reptile died and before it was torn to pieces by meat-eating dinosaurs, the creature was buried in a river bed. Sand filled its cavity after the softer tissue had decomposed, said Titus. The sand made an impression of the the skin from the inside, then solidified.

Titus said that three weeks ago a near-perfect skull of a similar hadrosaur, found earlier at the monument, was delivered to the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.

He said the hadrosaur weighed about three tons, had a length of 25 feet with a skull about 3 1/2 feet long. It is unknown if the skull is still attached to a body, extending deeper into the ridge or if it became separated from the body.

The skull will soon be removed from its rock tomb and sent to a laboratory and prepared for further study by using precision tools to peel away the rock layers surrounding it. Removing the skull and preparing it could take two years.

While discoveries of hadrosaurs have been made in Montana, Titus said the ones found in the monument suggest the possibility that dinosaurs thought to live only in northern areas might have mixed with those living only in southern regions.

"The whole age of dinosaurs is laid out before you here," said Titus, gazing out across the monument, studded with pinyon pine and juniper trees instead of the redwoods, cyprus magnolias and ferns the hadrosaurs once gorged on.

Rita Halfast of Page, Ariz., who visited the skull site Saturday with husband Tim and 8-year-old son, Nicholas, said she has always been interested in dinosaurs.

"They're fascinating," she said. "It was neat to see the fossil of one outside and not in a museum, though its also great what museums do."

"It was cool," said Kayla Shenfeld, 12. "I'm glad I came out here."

The tour was limited to 70 people. Another tour will be held Oct. 14.

To make reservations, call 435-644-4680.