I thought I would revisit the dinosaur tracks (officially the "20-Mile Wash Dinosaur Track Site") because, well, they are really quite fascinating. At left is a GoogleEarth (tm) satellite image of the location with an arrow pointing to the spot where I made the images. The whole outcrop of Entrada Sandstone is about 400 or 500 meters long and some 50 meters or so high. As I mentioned in the previous post, the footprints are from 3-toed Theropods, which were meat-eating, bipedal reptiles; the Entrada dates to about 160 million years ago in the mid to late Jurassic. The darker gray area where the prints are found is the Escalante Member, which is the uppermost layer, of the Entrada Sandstone.

This track had some water poured on it to make it somewhat more visible. I understand that the mark at the back of the print (left side of the image) is where the animal's tail dragged in the sand as it was walking. Things would be even more interesting if we knew what species made these tracks - I have done some searching but haven't had any luck finding an answer to that question.

Finally, here's a shot of a series of footprints. They are kind of hard to see but I can tell you that this creature had a pretty long stride and must have been large. Next time I'll have to remember to get some pics with something to use as a reference so you can see the relative size of them. Also note the tracks that are perpendicular to the set running vertically in the frame - I've read that there are over 1,000 prints at this one site!