Saturday, September 26, 2015

What is a Dinosaur Tracksite??

It is a place where a whole lotta' dinosaurs walked around on a muddy shoreline that later turned to rock. Millions of years later it is exposed for us to see!!


We've made it a bit farther south to Greybull, Wyoming. One of the local attractions is the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite, a creek bed where hundreds of dinosaur tracks are visible.

On our way out to the site we drove through some beautiful "badlands" type terrain. The layers of color and eroded hillsides create an amazing landscape.

We saw several Pronghorn in the open grasslands and were greeted by a little Desert Cottontail in the parking lot of the site. 
Pronghorn
Desert Cottontail
As you might imagine, the tracks themselves are a little tough to see. The "ballroom" area where most of the tracks are found contains dozens of individual tracks. How many do you see??

There is a boardwalk that leads you down to the creek bed where you are allowed to walk among the tracks. Some of the larger ones are easy to make out.

There is still study going on at the site to determine what species of dinosaur were here and what they were doing. It appears that they were smallish as Teri's hand fit nicely into the largest of the tracks. 

After viewing the site we sat for a bit and enjoyed the absolute silence of the area. This is truly the vast open West. However as we left we saw two school buses headed for the site. Now that would have been a different experience altogether!

Mark

5 comments:

  1. I'd say you got to enjoy the site just in the nick of time!

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  2. Looks like an interesting place to stop with a grandson who will undoubtably love dinosaurs in the future. Serene

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  3. We were there a couple of weeks ago. The drive down the Alkali Road was beautiful as well as the Bighorn Mountains.

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