Enough Dinosaur Tracks to Fill a Basement

DENVER —  Inside a cramped church basement, rows of folding tables overflow with dinosaur footprints hacked from bedrock or molded with plaster. Prints from all over the world line the walls. No glass barriers protect the artifacts from curious hands.

A stegosaur print the width of a stove caught the eye of visitor Erick Probeck, 5, who said he thought it was “the biggest footprint in the whole world.”

“I love it here. I want to come back tomorrow,” he said.

Probeck’s mother, Kathy, was pleased with how accessible the exhibit was: “You can walk right up to the T-rex skull and compare it to your own tiny head.”

The collection, at St. Cajetan’s Church near downtown Denver, represents more than 20 years’ worth of work by the Dinosaur Trackers, a small group of paleontologists at the University of Colorado at Denver.

It is unusual because it deals just with dinosaur tracks, said Martin Lockley, head of the Trackers. He believes scientists can learn more about dinosaurs by studying their tracks.

“Footprints are made by living animals. Skeletons are dead. You can’t get a direct feel for their behavior with a skeleton. With tracks you can see herds, migratory patterns and how they moved,” Lockley said.

The paleontologists, who have been hunting tracks for more than 20 years, work with paleontologists all over the world devoted to discovering tracks.

Lockley says they have found more than 1,000. Because space is so cramped at St. Cajetan’s, most of the exhibit is in storage.

“It’s a work in progress. We plan to rotate the exhibit when we find more tracks,” according to CU-Denver student Natalie Hook, who works at the exhibit.

Lockley hopes success with the exhibit will entitle the trackers to more space.

“Universities are famous for different things, like Gettysburg and their Civil War museum. We want to be known as the institution to view dinosaur tracks,” Lockley said.

Prints are removed from the rock when possible. Otherwise, casts are made from plaster or sometimes rubber, and the print is replicated. Replicas can be sent all over the world for display.

A traveling portion of the exhibit has been on display in Switzerland, China and several U.S. cities. A version was donated to the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah.

There are more than 150 sites in the United States where one can find tracks.

“Paleontologists have known about prints before they knew about bones. But for some reason they never had the idea to look for prints,” Lockley said. “But if you look for them, you see there are hundreds, thousands. It’s just a matter of opening your eyes.”

A small portion of the exhibit is devoted to new tracking in China. Lockley and his research partner, Joanna Wright, have recently received notice of tracks found in Iran, Burma and Thailand.