It seems like the perfect trip when paleontologist Grant Coleman joins a geology professor and an anthropologist to explore an unmapped canyon far out in the Utah desert. The sponsor's team leader promises Grant he can take home all the fossils he finds. On the first day at camp, an explosion strands the entire team hundreds of feet down on the canyon floor. It is soon clear that the mining company sponsor has more nefarious plans than the benign research they promised. The going is about to get tough for the three professors.

Then the situation gets worse. These humans aren't the only ones in this canyon. Supposedly extinct dinosaur species still roam the canyon's floor, and they aren't about to let humans become the new apex predator. Can Grant's dinosaur expertise and the other professors' insights combine to save them from these monsters? If not, they are doomed, because there's no rescue coming to Desolation Canyon.