Sometimes it is all about dissemination and education

Last Saturday October 17, Thomas, Dianna, Justin and I headed up to Bandera at the Mayan Dude Ranch. There, Dianna digitized a beautiful tracksite during Summer 2019 (see picture under Research Projects), which was interpreted as resulting from the motion of swimming dinosaurs. More recently, Dan and his student Chuckie from Trinity University did some field and lab work to confirm the presence of a period of low sea level at the track level that may have promoted early solidification (cementation) of the muddy substrate on to which dinosaurs walked, and thus preserved their tracks.

Jurassic Judy is one of the owners of the ranch and responsible for many of the activities offered to visitors. She asked Thomas to visit the ranch and give some explanation about the tracks to one of the visiting tours. This is an excellent opportunity to educate the general public about what we do as scientists and about the best practices in terms of preservation of geological features in Texas.

Jurassic Judy (in green) and Thomas are showing tracks and explaining the environment where dinosaurs lived during the Cretaceous

From young children to adults, everybody was fascinating by Thomas’ explanation of this dinosaur tracksite

Some large tracks are easily visible, especially if there pressure rim is preserved

some smaller tracks must be identified with a small tile; the number refers to a general map at the entrance of the tracksite that explain if a specific track corresponds to a left or right front (manus) or right (pes) limb

After Thomas’ speech, Dianna explained the novelty of our project and how using drone and photogrammetry boosts our ability to preserve such a site for future generations

this is probably this type of dinosaur that is responsible for this type of track