You Can Visit the World’s Largest Continuous Dinosaur Trackway, Now on Protected Public Land #fossils #paleontology #dinosaurs #trackway #jurassic

The tracks are located west of Ouray, Colorado, in the San Juan Mountains. USDA Forest Service

Smithsonian Magazine has an article about a dinosaur trackway in Colorado.  The track dates to about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.  134 consecutive footprints trace out a sauropod dinosaur walking for a bit and then changing direction in a loop.  The West Gold Hill Dinosaur Track site dates is located just west of Ouray, Colorado.  Ouray is a small town in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado with a population of around 1,000 residents.  The United States Forest Service has purchased the land, 27 acres, and will preserve and protect what is the largest continuous dinosaur trackway on the planet.

Imprinted in sandstone roughly 9,300 feet above sea level, the fossilized tracks form one of the few known examples of a dinosaur changing direction so significantly. Only five other instances have been discovered—four trackways in China and one near Moab, Utah. (The Utah site, called Copper Ridge Dinosaur Trackway, is on Bureau of Land Management land.) But this newly protected site is the only intact example of a turn greater than 180 degrees.

In 1945, the Charles family purchased the land in hopes of discovering gold. They knew about pothole-like features on the property, where they’d spent parts of their summers camping. But it wasn’t until 2021 that they realized the shallow indentations, which often filled with water, had been made by a dinosaur.