The Chance To See a 125-Million Years Old Dinosaur Footprints
The public will get the chance to see the footprints of a 125-million year old dinosaur that was discovered by a Utah hiker in 2009, reported by Deseret News. Since 2009, the location was kept a secret.
Studies on the north side of Moab were done by the scientists from the University of Colorado and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and excavations were started in 2013.
Volunteers, who were unable to control their excitement, were helping to prepare the site for public viewing by sweeping, scraping and brushing the things that were hidden for years.
One of the volunteers, Lee Shenton, said that they have uncovered over 200 tracks and they have found that the footprints are from a dozen different kinds of animals. Lee added that in at least one of the cases, there were 17 consecutive prints from the same animal.
Another volunteer, Allyson Mathis, said that since it is tracks of the past, it is good to preserve the information. She said that she loved the sites as they show the behavior of dinosaurs which cannot be understood through bones or body fossils.
Bureau of Land Management is making an attempt to document the footprints through 3-D photography and its paleontologist, Rebecca Hunt-Foster, told KSL TV that they hoped to replicate the tracks, just in case they get damaged or destroyed so that future researchers will be able to study them. She added that it is exciting to know that the area they are working at, an animal that used to live and breathe walked around the same area.
In the case of a few species, no bone was found. Rebecca said that they are trying to fill in gaps about the animals but they have not found their bones.
BLM is hoping that by October, the trail that is being connected to the dinosaur tracks will be open for public viewing and they are currently raising funds for it.