We’ll finish off this lazy day with two swell photos of a reader with some fossil footprints—of dinosaurs! Meet reader Juris, who posts as “rom” on this site. His notes are indented:
This is me in late 2008, on my way to visit the nearby mine site. It’s in Peru … Ancash region at an altitude of 4600 m.
Some dinosaur footprints are in the background (positive relief)—about 120 My in age. About a half kilometre down the road there are footprints from a different type of dinosaur in negative relief.
That’s very cool.
+1 ! I’ll say ! Mightily f i n e, Mr Juris !
Blue!
I’ll up that to +4 to make it a 5 as in 5 stars on the Michelin Guide of cool.
Very cool was my first thought too!
And very, very interesting as well.
Nice. That must have been an exhilarating trip.
Great footprints!🐾🐾
So one wonders at what altitude this was when the dinosaurs walked there? Surely not 4600 meters.
… and surely they didn’t walk on walls like gigantic flies. It’s impressive how the continental drift can raise and fold sediment layers and together preserve such footprints.
No, it’s greatly uplifted & twisted & tilted sedimentary rock & there’s a lot of lake fossil features. This rock is four times older than the Andes feature itself.
Nice prints!
Its just like foot print of Cats.. dont mind
Felis tridactylus.
They are really amazing.
Yes like when cats walk in fresh cement😻
I’ve seen some nice dinosaur prints just west of Moab Utah but they were more on the horizontal. These a really impressive!
Yes you are right..
What an incredible thing to see. Really exciting photo.
Since the year 2000, about 8000 dinosaur foot prints have been found in the Swiss Jura mountains, close to the French border. They are roundish, not as spectacular as the Therapod’s ones of the pictures above, between 0.2 and 0.8 m in diameter. They are from Diplodocus. I am living just over one hour by car away from the site but I never remember that I could go see them.
Very nice! It is easy to imagine a dinosaur loping along, minding its own business. Of course, later that day or week there was likely a big flood or volcanic eruption that filled in its tracks. I saw quite a few dinosaur trackways in the badlands of the Eastern Rockies from Alberta south when on my Dinotour vacation led by Phil Currie.
What a thrill that must have been for you, Juris! What a thrill for us to see too!
It was an interesting moment in my life. As we drove away I could not help wondering what mark would I make in my life [legacy]. 120 million years and we are “wowing” over some lumbering beast’s foot prints.
The conclusion I came to was we are leaving footprints all the time, just that they may or may not be recognised as such.
Tread carefully and with passion.
Well put. And in another vein, we’re called to make as small a carbon footprint as is possible.
Spectacular find. I once visited Dinosaur Footprint State Park in Connecticut which has a fine example of many smaller species in one field:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kzirkel/2378158497/in/photolist-6Y9pxT-6YdrzW-6Y9pFM-6imyFJ-zWxbU-2YFw7S-5ab4vs-nkkUst-nizs42-4C9FEH-6XuBXR-6iHEN2-2YAQ6P-ngx2iN-ngwPtA-6iHEDF-sFUCB-nihUsW-sFZq4-nizoGc-6KqDAk-jmWqE5-niBAaC-nkkNKM-jmWoDw-jmWrXW-jmWsU5-jmS5b6-2MMTzd-jmU1Af
It’s great when the footprints of predators and prey overlap or when they match a family group or herd with a mixture of individuals from adult to baby.
Amazing fossils!
Thanks for this submission, those are some really cool footsie fossils.