Dino Tracks

March 2, 2018

A slab of rock reveals what appears to be traces of a dinosaur dance party.

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Transcript

BOB HIRSHON (host):

Dinosaur stomping grounds. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is best known for space-based discoveries. But paleontologist Ray Stanford found a slab of rock near a parking lot there packed with prehistoric footprints 110 million years old. First, he noticed the track of an armored dinosaur known as a nodosaur. And following it:

RAY STANFORD (unaffilated):

There were the four footprints of a baby nodosaur walking across it in the same direction.

HIRSHON:

Then he spotted a brontosaurus footprint; a parade of small, flesh-eating dinosaurs; footprints and beak prints of a pterosaur. And most exciting of all: mammal tracks, rarely found alongside those of dinosaurs. There are as many as 100 tracks on the eight-foot long stone: a snapshot of life in the Cretaceous period that will keep researchers busy for years. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.

Story by Bob Hirshon