Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
nosaur teeth. Yet dinosaur ichnology also could be expanded to a more global view.
Going back to a basic definition—that a trace is any indirect evidence of behavi-
or aside from body parts—this concept can be taken further. For instance, to use
a well-documented phenomenon, global climate change today is largely a human-
causedtrace.Diddinosaursaffecttheworldinasimilar(albeitnon-industrial)way?
Coulditbethattheburningoffossilfuelstodayisreallyacompositetrace,onethat
would not be happening if it were not for dinosaurs changing the earth to one con-
ducive for making those fuels?
Maybe not. But let's explore anyway. The worst that will happen is to learn
something new, while also expanding our perspectives by considering how dino-
saursmayhavebeentheoriginal“ecosystemengineers”ofterrestrialenvironments,
altering them in ways that never would have happened without them and their be-
haviors and resulting traces. We will also take a look at how these alterations con-
stitutedinosauriantracesthatstillaffectusinsignificant waystoday,andhowthese
traces will continue to influence our future.
That One's Going to Leave a Mark: Dinosaur Trails and Their Effects on Land-
scapes, Rivers, and Ecology
I'd seen plenty of large sauropod tracks in the western U.S. and parts of Europe,
but never ones this big. I tried to informally measure a few of the larger ones by
making a circle with my arms above them. But my hands were always wide apart,
making only semi-circles. Had I been doing ballet, I would have failed to complete
the first position
bras au repos
, meaning the tracks were well over a meter wide.
Once recognized, they were easily visible along the seashore as shallow rounded or
oblong pits in the reddish Cretaceous sandstone exposed there. Once my wife Ruth
andIpickedoutafewassearchimages,hundredsrevealedthemselves,accentuated
by indirect light as the sun began to set over the ocean. It was a dinosaur-trampled
mess, and a glorious one.
Although the marine platform was heavily eroded, a few of the flat sandstone
bedding surfaces were continuous enough for trackway patterns to emerge. With
