[1] The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 12, 2019, named it as a national monument.

It was hypothesized by Peter Dodson in 1980 that this strong concentration of mixed fossilized bones was due to a "predator trap", however it is more likely that this site was actually caused by an extreme drought.

In 1939-41 a field party of Princeton University, led by William Lee Stokes (1915–1994, known as the "Father of Utah geology"), came on site to extensively dig up specimens.

This project granted casts or specimens of dinosaurs to museums and institutions from the US but also from countries all around the world, in exchange of financial and excavation assistance.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) opened a visitor center at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in 1968.

An anastomosing river system consists of multiple interconnected channels confined by prominent levees separated by interchannel topographic lows.

The depositional environment of the quarry mudstone was an interchannel seasonal accumulation of clay nested in a topographic low between channel levees called a floodpond.

Dinosaurs came to the floodpond during a drought in search of water, with the herbivores and smaller carnivores falling prey to the large theropods present for food.

As the drought continued, the dinosaurs present dwindled until eventually adult Allosaurus would resort to cannibalizing juvenile individuals for survival.

For a long time, the atypical predator/prey ratio (3:1) represented at the quarry was thought to be the result of possible pack hunting tendencies of Allosaurus.

The high percentage of smaller individual allosaurs suggests that juveniles coordinated their efforts to capture and kill prey.