Squatting Dinosaur Tracks

Squatting Dinosaur Tracks

This illustrated image shows the imprints of the squatting dinosaur. Image SIA0861 is an unedited version of the prints.

Sometime between 200 and 205 million years ago a meat eating Eubrontes dinosaur crouched on the shore of lake Dixie. Perhaps it had been eating fish in the nearby deep water. The dinosaur may have been a Dilophosaurus weighing around 1,000 pounds, measuring 6 feet high at the hip and 18 feet long. He sat down leaving the imprint of his feet, heel, pelvis, hands, and tail in the sand. In the process of getting up he shuffled his feet, leaving a second set of impressions. He arose and walked away. For some reason his impressions were buried waiting to be discovered at a later date.

The discovery of the squatting dinosaur tracks came about because of a 1.2 million dollar museum to be built on the Johnson Farm track site. The museum will provide a 16,000 square foot climate controlled environment to house the dinosaur tracks and to prevent them from deteriorating. On March 17, 2004 while in the process of surveying the sandstone where the foundation of the museum was to go, the squatting dinosaur track discovery was made. The tracks are faint and very fragile, but because they are so rare, the museum will most likely be moved to enclose the tracks. Any attempt to move the tracks would probably destroy them.

One of the significant observations about the tracks is that the claws on the front hands turned inward which was contrary to the conventional belief. As Jim Kirkland, the state paleontologist, stated, "This is really neat. It's extraordinarily rare to find something like this."