Spiral Jetty

One strange part of Spiral Jetty was the inclusion of many shots of dinosaur skeletons in a museum setting. At firs the only connection I could draw between dinosaurs and the spiral jetty is that many dinosaur fossils/skeletons have been found in Utah, where the spiral jetty is located. As the film progressed, though, I began to see that Smithson was trying to give the viewer a sense that the jetty was a symbol of all the individual parts of the environment coming together to create this unique space where the earth art was created. He constantly cuts between the still water (presumably of the Great Salt Lake) and the piles of earth splashing down as the heavy-duty machinery creates the jetty. He talks a lot about the salt of the water forming crystals, which build upon each other to create twisting solids, just as the jetty is a landmass twisting into the water, unifying the two. When talking about the crystals, he momentarily shows a horned lizard or something whose skin is made up of patterns similar to the crystal formations. He seems to be using this seemingly random shot to create a jump in logic between the crystals and a lifeform found in the area; he's saying a similar design and influence is found throughout and that, on a fundamental level, everything that exists has been created from the same things. He illustrates this in the narration of the film when he goes through all the compass directions and repeats that the same things (salt crystals, water, rock) can be seen wherever he is looking. I think this is where the dinosaurs fit in. Although they have been dead for millions of years, their remains still exist and are therefore a part of the environment. They could be making up the salt, which is forming crystals which are, creating mass, which has been used to form the jetty. The spiral form of the jetty supports this as it seems to be a giant swirl that is spinning the biggest elements of the landscape into a tiny point at its center. Conversely, it can also be seen as taking the smallest particles and linking them to the large world existing at the outer spirals. The dinosaurs add an element of time to the equation by expressing that it's not only space and size which are related, but history as well.