By BRIAN MAFFLY, Salt Lake Tribune

Vandals have struck a rich dinosaur quarry outside Hanksville, Utah where Illinois paleontologists this summer began excavating several nearly complete specimens of Jurassic-era species.

SALT LAKE CITY -- One of the most recognizable characters on kids' television is a marine creature that works in the Krusty Krab diner and is buddies with a squid, a crab, a starfish and a psychotic plankton. SpongeBob's real-life counterparts occupy the lowest animal rung on the Linnaean ladder, lacking nerves, muscles, internal organs and any appendage capable of flipping burgers.

A team of Illinois scientists looking for fossils of big dinosaurs in Utah's Morrison limestone formation struck pay dirt last month, opening the possibility of a major dinosaur quarry outside nearby Hanksville, Utah.

SALT LAKE CITY -- For years, paleontologists have puzzled over strange markings etched into dinosaur fossils.

The active ingredients in bear spray are capsaicin and related capsaicinoids, compounds commonly found in chilies and other peppers. Avoid pepper sprays produced for personal defense. They don't work on bears.

If you're roaming bear country, your best protection against an unpleasant encounter is a can of bear spray, not a gun, according to Brigham Young University wildlife biologist Tom Smith.

In May 2003, near Mammoth Lakes, Calif., a hiker came across the decomposed corpse of a woman with long black hair.

SALT LAKE CITY -- If they could talk, the walls of historic buildings could tell amazing stories. But structural timbers removed from the Salt Lake Tabernacle are silently providing researchers important clues about Utah's history and climate.

Mexico has been terra incognita for dinosaurs for years, but that is rapidly changing after a multinational team of scientists extracted a skeleton from a quarry outside Saltillo, Mexico, and assembled a skull of striking singularity -- a hatchet-faced, duck-billed specimen whose elongated nasal passages could have emitted a Cretaceous love song.

Greenhouse emissions' warming effect on the atmosphere is bad enough, but their bigger threat is the ecological chaos they are causing as the world's oceans become more acidic, according to a marine scientist.