Beginning in 1935, geologists and paleontologists have searched the mesa's outcroppings, finding dinosaur fossils in the Jurassic and Triassic strata. A large quantity of dinosaur bones has been recovered from the Black Mesa locale; totaling over eighteen tonnes. These remains were split between several species, including stegosaurus, camptosaurus, diplodocus, and edmontosaurus. Clear fossil physical evidence, a distinct line of footprints believed to have been made by an allosaurus, has been found juxtaposed with the Carrizo Creek, which runs around the modern-day northern edge of the mesa.