”We Were Freaking Out” – Scientists Explore Dinosaur Coliseum

The Coliseum site is viewed from above. The once-horizontal rocks are now nearly vertical, exposing many hundreds of tracks on flatirons of resistant rock. The dimples on the rock faces are dinosaur tracks. Credit: Photo by Patrick Druckenmiller

“When our colleagues first visited the site, they saw a dinosaur trackway at the base of this massive cliff,” said Pat Druckenmiller, senior author of the paper and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. “When we first went out there, we didn’t see much either.” The tracks are a mix of hardened impressions in the ancient mud and casts of tracks created when sediment filled the tracks and then hardened.

The area was part of a large river system, he said, with ponds and lakes nearby. The climate in the area was warmer than today, more like the Pacific Northwest. There were coniferous and deciduous trees and an understory of ferns and horsetails.

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'We were freaking out': Scientists left 'flabbergasted' by detailed dinosaur footprints covering a cliff in AlaskaHarry is a U.K.-based staff writer at Live Science. He studied Marine Biology at the University of Exeter (Penryn campus) and after graduating started his own blog site 'Marine Madness,' which he continues to run with other ocean enthusiasts. He is also interested in evolution, climate change, robots, space exploration, environmental conservation and anything that's been fossilized. When not at work he can be found watching sci-fi films, playing old Pokemon games or running (probably slower than he'd like).
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