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ing this, climbing over hill and dale, while I, doing my best Marlin Perkins
Wild
Kingdom
impression, stayed safely on the beach, waving to them once in a while as
I looked up and saw their tiny figures crawling along the outcrop. Ultimately, they
wereabletonarrowdownthelikelyzonefromwherethetrackscame,butitwasin-
accessible, on a sheer vertical face that kept saying “You'll all die!” if anyone tried
to approach it. (This one needed no warning signs.) So gravity had been our friend,
and I expect it will continue to be, as we can simply wait for it to provide us with
more dinosaur tracks on Milanesia Beach in the future.
Walking Forward, One Step at a Time
We knew that lots more science had to be done before we could share our finds
with the rest of the world, but we were confident that that day would come. Sure
enough, exactly one year later, on June 14, 2011, my coauthors and I—Tom Rich,
Pat Vickers-Rich, Mike Hall, and Gonzalo-Vazquez Prokopec—received the good
news that our scientific article had been accepted for publication in the Australian
paleontology journal
Alcheringa
. Our peers confirmed what we knew that day one
year before: we had discovered the best assemblage of polar dinosaur tracks in the
Southern Hemisphere, the first dinosaur trackway from the southern part of Aus-
tralia, and extended the geographic range of dinosaur finds in Victoria farther to the
west. It was a most pleasing outcome from an otherwise frustrating field season.
The less technical picture that emerged from this discovery was this: Imagine
small theropod dinosaurs—probably adorned with colorful feathers, ranging in size
fromchickenstocranes—makingtrackswhilewalkingaroundonariverfloodplain
after the spring floods accompanied bya polar thaw.The tracks fell into three sizes,
almostliketheycouldbefittedforshoes,oneofwhichwasquitesmall(thosewould
be the “chickens”) and two others close to one another, but with one slightly larger
than the other (men and women “cranes”). Although I couldn't prove it for sure, I
suspected these three sizes were from a dinosaur family, consisting of still-growing
juveniles accompanied by their mother and father.
