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
SciTechDaily has a story about the discovery of extensive dinosaur trackways in Alaska. The trackways were found in Denali National Park and Preserve by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It is the largest documented single dinosaur track site in Alaska. The area of the tracks spans the size of one and a half football fields and displays footprints from numerous dinosaur species. The fossils date to about 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, when Alaska was much warmer than it is today. The details were published in the journal Historical Biology.
At first glance, the site is unremarkable in the context of the park’s vast landscape: just a layered, rocky outcrop rising 20-some stories from its base.
“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.”
Stewart recalled being initially underwhelmed when he approached the site at the end of a seven-hour hike. Then dusk approached, and the team took another look.
