Walking In Dinosaur Tracks

We almost turned around and left the minute we got there.  Like many places, the entrance past the fence was protected by a cattle guard. Unlike most, the bars in the guard were other than at the level of the rest of the ground on either side. There were four huge bumps as I drove slowly over, one for each tire. Each bump made a sharp jerk of the car, not simply up/down, but sideways too or even diagonal, jarring Steve's back each time in the most painful way for him. Heading in, the untreated ground which passed for a road was in nearly as bad shape, prolonging the pain and aggravating it even more, this wheel, pause, that one, pause, two bumpbump... and so on. I tried to make it easier by making it slower. It didn't seem to help any. Or maybe it was just too late.

We were on our way home after the eclipse. Other than a food or pit stop, we all welcomed heading straight there. Well, after this, that is. I already wondered if we were actually going to see the dinosaur tracks the sign out at the highway advertised. I already knew Steve wasn't going to head out walking over the very bumpy ground, especially once parked when we saw how far people were spreading out. At least he could sit in the car in relative comfort, or what might possibly pass for it after that entrance. Like the dog, he'd be on the shady side of the car, windows down enough for air to pass. We'd arranged once stopped to put my SD card in his camera now that mine was fubar, take pictures, and swap back afterwards. Rich would be coming along with me, partly out of his own interest, partly to give any assist I might need over the bumpy ground ahead. He also turned out to be the one to head back to the car to replace the camera battery after its already long day. Steve's camera and mine use the exact same batteries, and I brought a surplus, Steve hadn't brought more than two and didn't recharge either the previous night.

There was a guide, named Alvin. I asked Rich to head over to his stand and ask what the fee was to take the tour. He returned to the car without an answer, but we started out to join the group which had already left. In other words, we were behind from the get-go. We found out later he acepted donations, and made one.

It helped that Alvin had a squirt bottle of water which he used to fill and darken small tracks, or outline very large ones. I caught enough to get an idea which were raptors of various sizes, which prey (including smaller raptors), and stopped behind everybody else to shoot the darkened rock once people had gone. Mostly, anyway. Occasionally I included a shadow of somebody's head, or an actual foot, just to give a sense of scale. When all is rock, there is no other way to judge.

The two sizes of tracks indicate a larger raptor chasing a smaller for a meal. The tiny wrinkles in the rock the tracks are on indicate it was covered with plants when they were made. Another location with what looked to my uneducated eyes to be very similar was evidence of lots of animals of different sorts running all in the same direction, all at the same time, to try to escape the heat and materials from a meteor strike. When? I knew of course about Meteor Crater well southeast of our location, way too small I thought to have created more than fairly local chaos. Was he talking about the big one in the Yucatan? Dinosaur extinction? I had caught the word "irridium". Was that why everything was intact in one layer, from foot prints, to plant fossils with their own footprints on them, to even some bones. It really is a disadvantage lagging behind the group and missing the dialogue.

This pudgy track is a very large one, the well-padded footprint of a T Rex. It too is running in the same direction as the others. I could have easily stood in it along with Rich, close enough to hold us both steady, that is. Before it was wetted down, some others had walked in it somewhat unawares. Or as I like to say, stupid and careless.

These tracks are fairly small, not as much as the first ones,  perhaps 10" long, but just about double the size of the larger chasing one. Thus far, three or four toes seemed to be typical patterns.

I had to ask a couple of people who were both standing on this track at the same time and still had a couple feet of distance between them if they would please step off of it so some of the rest of us could take pictures of it. They looked surprised as if they hadn't realized what they were climbing around on, then melted away to join the rest of the group. Note the foot of another visitor with his camera in the upper right corner, kept in the photo for scale. The outline is the track of gigantasaurous. It shows, judging on skeletons on display, the prominent heel bone which makes the hollow in the track closest to me. When Alvin heard my request for them to move off it, he came back over with his bottle and outlined the print for us. Again it's heading in the same direction as the rest.

Wouldn't it make a great design for a Halloween mask?

You might ask did any of them get away? At least one died on the spot, where incomplete bones remain on the ground. Alvin did a fun demonstration with rocks for us. Taking a small one, he struck a rock in the outer circle  of rocks which protects the remains from unwary tourists. (If you trip over it you've really got some problems.) The rock he struck had a sharp high rock-on-rock  sound. Then he struck the bones and got a  dull hollow sound. Some of us walked around with small rocks for a bit trying to locate any more bones which might have been overlooked... because the scientists who'd been going over the extensive site, and still were, surely must have missed one along the way. Ya think? Actually, they had because we found another hollow sounding one, very badly shaped but making the right noises.

In the top photo, the curvy one on the left is bone, the rounder one on the right is rock. The bottom photo shows the fossil of some kind of raptor, the misshapen remains of ribs trailing down to the left, the open jaw on the right. No visible teeth or sockets remained in the jaw so my conclusion is that the bones were exposed for a while before getting covered and becoming fossils. I estimate what is left is 7 or 8 feet long. The two black shadows at the far left are of people's heads. as they walk up closer.

You may note that all the rocks and sand come in only two colors, red of the desert sandstone, and whiter and hard. I did locate one bicolor piece of sparkly sandstone in the circle of rocks, but otherwise all is reddish or tan/grey.

Except for the coprolites. You know, dino poop.  Fossilized. They come in little rounded plops, as if the stool was somewhat loose when it dropped, or just fell from high enough in the really big fellows that it assumed that shape despite how hard it was when it hit, flat bottom, rounded ridged top. Not that I'm claiming to be a poop expert, of course.

This photo actually holds three of them.  Front to back, or bottom to top if you will, super large and cracked in half, medium large and ditto, and a reddish pile of lumpy stuff like a pile of sausages in a long casing, all in a single spot. That smaller dino must have had some peace in order to stop in one place long enough to let it pile up like that. The front one which looks the lightest in color actually shows deep blackish shading  under a thin light colored layer when you get up close. Don't worry though - the stink is long gone.

In other good news, the way out of the site was much smoother than in, and Steve's back, which had started to recover a bit, wasn't jolted back to its worst again.