Red Rock Canyon Dinosaur Track

On October 31 I was in Red Rock Canyon with two members of WIPS (Western Interior Paleontological Society). We were attempting to make molds and casts of dino tracks and other fossils found in the outcrops that can't be collected. Happily, we were met by a most friendly park ranger, who drove us near the outcrop, allowing us to avoid carrying the 12 foot ladder an extra mile. We still, however, had to carry the ladder up the steep hogback, through cactus and talus. We didn't have much luck with the casting of the tracks. The iguanodon track was too deep and the foam casting material broke into about 40 pieces! We got a nice cast of the ankylosaur track, but (unknown to my wonderful WIPS friends) as soon as I got home to admire the cast, my cat jumped on top of the foam, leaving four well-formed cat tracks on top of the ankylosaur track.

All was not lost, though! As we were leaving the outcrop, one fellow fossil lover looked down in a pile of talus, left from when Red Rock Canyon was a quarry, and saw laying there a dinosaur track cast that had fallen off of its original outcrop. What an exciting find. I can only think that the quarry men tossed it there as they were removing the preferred sections of rock, not realizing what it was. I have stepped over that same spot, not noticing the track, for over two years!

The best fossils collected from Red Rock Canyon will be displayed at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum beginning later this month. Hopefully the ankylosaur track will be among those fossils!

The website it up!

After days of work the new website, paleotrailsproject.org, is online. I had no idea what I was doing, but with some final assistance from the technical service department of my server I did it. I still have some photos to post, and I'm sure I'll make some changes, but it's a start. Unfortunately we had some problems with out old paleotrails.org site and so we had to start from scratch. It's not quite as sophisticated as the old site, but it should do the job.

Our newest project is to document the geology and paleontology of Corral Bluffs. It's been a lot of fun so far. It's a completely different type of site than any other in Colorado Springs. I've found several pieces of turtle and crocodile so far. I'm hoping for a mammal jaw or two, as mammals are the important fossil of this formation. My field work in Hell Creek Montana is coming in handy, otherwise I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of what to look for.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a day in the field, but the ground is covered with snow, so we'll have to put that off for a bit. We've been lucky and haven't run into any rattlesnakes so far, and hopefully they're all sleeping for the season now.

I'll post more later about Red Rock Canyon and other continuing paleontological adventures. Thanks for checking in!

This is my first try at creating my own blog. This is a test.