Dino dance floor- a thousand prints together, of four species in Utah

It might have been a dino nightclub or a really complex game of Twister, but there’s evidence of 1000 dino tracks to the effect they were pretty busy there. Either that or they were wearing golf shoes. The site looks like an old mud flat.

The BBC has managed to describe the location as on the Arizona-Utah border. Which means either that British geography is as good as American, or that American geography is contagious. The article, however, is interesting enough:

The site covers about a third of a hectare and records dinosaur movements around what was probably a watering hole during the Early Jurassic Period, when the US south-west was covered with a field of sand dunes larger than the Sahara Desert.

Investigation of the site reveals at least four dinosaur species were present, with the animals ranging from adults to youngsters.

"The different size tracks [2.5-50cm] may tell us that we are seeing mothers walking around with babies," says Winston Seiler, who worked on the project.

Obviously, a Jurassic P&C meeting, with amenities for kids. The herds were obviously pretty well organized, given that the adults could literally step on the really young dinos. The prints were covered by sand, and have been exposed by time removing the overlying sediments. Apparently they, too, will erode, which seems like a waste. These sites are significant, and there is information to be had from the prints themselves, because they indicate size and weight of these early Jurassic dinosaurs. The size of the younger ones is important, because it indicates how old they were when able to travel with herds, very relevant to herd behavior during migrations. Ah well, when they figure out that Arizona and Utah aren’t in the same place, they might take an interest in the subject.