#Black mesa dinosaur tracks full

Rains slowly eroded away layers of the rock, exposing the footprints. They are near a fault line, where the land has moved up and down over the years, she said. Over time, as more sediment built up, they became rock. They likely became covered by sediment that filled them up quickly enough to preserve them but gently enough not to scour them out, Hunt-Foster said. Paleontologists believe the tracks were made over several days in what was a shallow lake. вЂњIt is a beautiful track site, one of the best ones IвЂ™ve ever seen.вЂќ вЂњWe donвЂ™t usually get this,вЂќ said Hunt-Foster, a paleontologist for 16 years. The site is one of the largest areas of dinosaur tracks from the early Cretaceous period known to exist in North America, she said. The tracks include a set of 17 consecutive footprints left by Tyrannosaurus rex ancestor and the imprint of an ancient crocodile pushing off into the water. Since then, paleontologists led by a team at the University of Colorado at Denver have studied them and prepared them for display. They were first discovered in 2009 by a resident. There are more than 200 tracks in an area smaller than a football field from 10 different ancient animals that lived during the early Cretaceous period, said Utah Bureau of Land Management paleontologist ReBecca Hunt-Foster.

#Black mesa dinosaur tracks full

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A dry wash full of 112-million-year-old dinosaur tracks that include an ankylosaurus, dromaeosaurus and a menacing ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus rex, is set to open to the public this fall near Moab.