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Fossil hunting in Utah: trilobites, fossils and meteorites

Where can you go fossil hunting in Utah? Start with trilobites. In the House Range west of Delta, the Wheeler Shale gives up thousands of them every year, and you can split the shale yourself at two family-run quarries or on the public land around them. Beyond the trilobites there are the Ordovician seashells and crinoids of Fossil Mountain, oyster beds near Caineville, petrified wood on BLM land, and two meteorite areas in the open desert. Dinosaur bones are another story: at Dinosaur National Monument and Jurassic National Monument you can look, but never take. Below: where to go, what you can keep, how to search, the famous sites you can only visit, and the clubs that can take you there.

Where you can dig and take it home

Utah has some of the most famous fossil sites on Earth, but most of its dinosaur country is in national parks, national monuments, state parks or on tribal and private land, where you can only look. These are the places we've checked one by one where you can legally collect and keep what you find:

Bones and teeth (vertebrate fossils) are protected on federal land: there, leave them in place and report them. Elsewhere the rules depend on the landowner: each site page says what applies.

See them on the Utah map: 24 fossil spots · 41 meteorite spots · 2 dig sites · 1 public collecting area · 10 clubs

What people find in Utah

Fossils: Trilobites (10 spots), Brachiopods (5 spots), Petrified wood (4 spots), Ammonites (3 spots), Sponges (2 spots), Plant material in the form of wood (2 spots), Stems (2 spots), Leaves (2 spots), Seeds (2 spots), Fronds. tidwell (1962 (2 spots), P. 93) states: “plants generally occur on bedding planes (2 spots), Vary with different types of sediments. in pink silty shale (2 spots)

Meteorites: Stony meteorites (ordinary chondrites (32 spots), One enstatite chondrite) (32 spots), Stony meteorite (H5 chondrite) (9 spots)

Where to find fossils in Utah

Where to find trilobites in Utah: the House Range

About 505 million years ago, western Utah lay under a shallow sea. Its muddy floor became the Wheeler Shale, and it kept trilobites by the million. The classic spot is Antelope Springs, in the Wheeler Amphitheater of the House Range, about 50 miles west of Delta. The most common trilobite there is Elrathia kingii, usually under an inch long; with luck you'll also find the larger Asaphiscus wheeleri, tiny eyeless agnostids and small brachiopods.

Two family-run quarries work the trilobite layers: U-Dig Fossils, run by a family that has collected trilobites here for generations, and A New Dig, just up the road, where you dig by reservation and an excavator brings up fresh shale. You pay, split the rock with a hammer and keep what you find. The BLM land around Antelope Springs is open to collecting too, and we have mapped the public spots described by the Utah Geological Survey.

Long before collectors arrived, the native people of this desert picked up trilobites here and wore them as amulets. Today the House Range supplies many of the trilobites sold in rock shops around the world.

Fossil Mountain and the Confusion Range

South-west of the trilobite quarries, the slopes of Fossil Mountain expose seabed rocks from the Ordovician, about 485 to 458 million years old, crowded with brachiopods, trilobites, cephalopods, gastropods, sponges, graptolites and echinoderms. The mountain was named by Frank Beckwith of Delta, who explored the West Desert and promoted it to fossil collectors, and in the 1930s University of Utah geology students came here on regular field trips.

Today Fossil Mountain sits inside the King Top Wilderness Study Area. The BLM allows collecting reasonable amounts of common invertebrate fossils, but only from the surface: no digging, and no vehicles past the end of the road. Walk the wash on the north side and the lower slopes, where fossils weather out of the hillside on their own.

The ranges around it hold more: horn corals, crinoids, brachiopods and ammonites in the Confusion Range, and more Ordovician brachiopods and trilobites around Ibex. A few of those spots sit on state trust land, where you need the $25 SITLA permit, and the card on the map tells you which.

Where to find crinoid fossils in Utah

Meteorites in Utah: where they've been found

Utah has 28 meteorites in the official record of the Meteoritical Society. The biggest is the Drum Mountains iron, 529 kilograms, found near Delta in 1944 and the ninth heaviest meteorite ever found in the United States. Most of the others are single finds scattered across the state, and we don't put markers on single finds.

The Tule Valley Hardpan, a dry lake about 50 miles west of Delta, is different: nine meteorites from different falls were found on the same stretch of bare clay between 2001 and 2014, two of them during a BYU geology club outing. They are small, from about 1 to 37 grams, and one is a rare enstatite chondrite. Fossil Mountain is a few miles to the south, so you can do both in one trip.

On August 13, 2022, a daytime fireball crossed northern Utah and sonic booms shook the Salt Lake Valley: the first witnessed meteorite fall in Utah since Garland in 1950. Doppler weather radar tracked the falling stones to the south end of the Great Salt Lake, and within weeks hunters had recovered more than a dozen pieces, the largest about 780 grams. The big pieces are gone, but the radar showed fragments down to a fraction of a gram. Part of the fall zone is open BLM land; the lake bed and shoreline are state land, where collecting is not allowed.

How we built the zones: for each area we take the meteorites registered with the Meteoritical Society, draw a circle of about 1.2 miles around each find, keep only the open BLM land inside it, and place a marker about every 0.6 mile. A marker shows where meteorites have been found, not where one is waiting for you: the odds on any given day are low, but patient hunters still turn up the odd stone.

How to hunt fossils and meteorites in Utah

Easy places to start in Utah

Want a complete trilobite? These two family-run quarries in the House Range let you dig in the Wheeler Shale and keep what you find, and at Fossil Mountain the BLM welcomes collectors on the surface, free of charge:

Join a fossil club in Utah

Utah's rock clubs know the public sites and run trips through the year, and three chapters of the Utah Friends of Paleontology, in Salt Lake City, St. George and Moab, bring paleontologists to talk every month and take members into the field. Write to them and ask about their next trip.

Famous dinosaur sites in Utah you can visit but not dig

At Dinosaur National Monument, near Jensen, the Quarry Exhibit Hall is built right over the hillside where Earl Douglass found dinosaur bones in 1909. About 1,500 bones are still in the rock, from Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and the long-necked giants, exactly where a Jurassic river left them. In September 2025, crews repaving the parking lot uncovered new bones, the first dug at the quarry since 1924. It's run by the National Park Service, and nothing may be collected, not even a chip of rock. For fossils you can keep, head west to the trilobite quarries of the House Range.

Jurassic National Monument, south of Price, protects the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur bones ever found: more than 12,000 bones from at least 74 animals, most of them Allosaurus, Utah's state fossil. The BLM runs a small visitor center and trails there, but the bones are protected. Around Price, open BLM land has fossil clams, ammonites, plant fossils and petrified wood you may collect, and several of those spots are on our map.

North of Moab, the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite shows more than 200 tracks and traces, about 112 million years old, left by at least ten kinds of animals, from sauropods to a crocodile that slid across the mud. Stay on the boardwalk: even walking on the tracks damages them, and tracks are vertebrate fossils that no one may collect.

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park has trails through logs of petrified wood. Taking anything out of a state park is illegal, and over the years the park has collected dozens of letters from visitors who mailed their stolen wood back, blaming it for a run of bad luck. Petrified wood on open BLM land is a different story: you may collect it within the federal limits, and we have mapped spots near St. George and in the canyon country.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument keeps producing new dinosaurs for Utah's museums, but it's a national monument, and we leave it off our map. Before you go out, see the real thing at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal or the Prehistoric Museum in Price.

Staying safe while fossil hunting in Utah

Utah fossil curiosities and the state fossil

Questions we often get

Is it legal to collect fossils in Utah?

On BLM land, yes: common invertebrate and plant fossils, like trilobites, shells and leaf imprints, in reasonable amounts for your own collection, up to 25 pounds a day plus one piece and 250 pounds a year. Selling them is not allowed. In the national forests, limited personal collecting of the same kinds of fossils is generally allowed, but check with the local ranger district. On state trust land you need a SITLA rockhounding permit. National parks, state parks and tribal land are off limits, and on private land you need the owner's permission.

Where can I find trilobites in Utah?

In the House Range west of Delta, around Antelope Springs. U-Dig Fossils and A New Dig let you dig in the Wheeler Shale for a fee and keep what you find, and the BLM land around them is open to collecting. Fossil Mountain, to the south-west, has Ordovician trilobites too, surface collecting only.

Where can I find crinoid fossils in Utah?

Fossil Mountain in Millard County is the easiest place: crinoids are among the most common fossils in the loose rocks on its slopes, and the BLM allows surface collecting of reasonable amounts. The Confusion Range around it has crinoids too, and in southern Utah you can find the star-shaped stem plates of Isocrinus, a Middle Jurassic crinoid.

Do I need a permit to collect on Utah state trust land?

Yes. Trust land is not public land: you need a SITLA rockhounding permit, $25 a year for an individual or family. It allows hand collecting of up to 25 pounds plus one piece a day and 250 pounds a year, for personal use only, and never vertebrate fossils. It doesn't cover trust land under a mineral lease, land posted closed to rockhounding, or other state land such as state parks.

Can I collect petrified wood in Utah?

On BLM land, yes: up to 25 pounds a day plus one piece, and no more than 250 pounds a year, for personal use. Not in Escalante Petrified Forest State Park or in any national park.

Can I keep a meteorite I find in Utah?

On BLM land, yes: you can collect meteorites on the surface, with a metal detector but no motorized or mechanical tools, up to 10 pounds per person per year, for personal use only, with no selling or trading. The bed and shoreline of the Great Salt Lake are state land, where collecting is not allowed, and on private land a meteorite belongs to the landowner.

Can I collect fossils at Dinosaur National Monument?

No. Collecting anything in a place run by the National Park Service is illegal, and the bones at Jurassic National Monument are protected too. Dinosaur bones, teeth and tracks can't be collected anywhere on public land in Utah without a research permit.

What if I find a dinosaur bone, tooth or track?

Leave it where it is. Vertebrate fossils can't be collected on any federal or state land in Utah except under permits issued to museums and universities. Take photos, note the GPS point and report it to the land manager or the Utah Geological Survey.

Can I collect fossils at Fossil Mountain?

Yes: reasonable amounts of common invertebrate fossils for personal use, but only from the surface. Fossil Mountain is inside the King Top Wilderness Study Area, so no digging and no vehicles past the end of the road.

More treasure hunting in Utah

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