“Like ripping pages out of that history.” Here’s what’s happening now that some of the most fossil-rich areas in the country lost protections when Trump rolled back Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.  https://t.co/5hy5XFFA2h #MonumentsForAll

— National Parks Conservation Association (@NPCA) March 29, 2018

David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, says, “They’re very rich and very complete sequences, that’s why they were set aside, and taking parts of them out of the monuments is essentially like ripping pages out of that history.”

Polly says the fossils still have some protection under federal law, but because they’re no longer on monument land, they could be destroyed by activities like mining or grazing.

The change also jeopardizes funding for scientific work. Paleontologist Rob Gay was excavating a Triassic site of crocodile-like creatures in Bears Ears last year when the monument boundaries shifted and invalidated his grant money. He says, “So we’re still researching the fossils that are out of the ground…but for the fossils still in the ground, it’s sort of in limbo.”