Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Thistale,whichhasreignedformorethanthirtyyearsandisknownworldwide
by paleontologists and laypeople alike, faced a radical makeover in the light of new
evidence presented in a paper published by paleontologists Anthony Romilio and
Steven Salisbury in 2011. The fresh hypothesis states that the “dinosaur stampede”
was not triggered by the arrival of a predator, and no stalking of other dinosaurs by
a voracious predator happened either. Yet this new evidence and its accompanying
explanation has not been completely accepted, and in fact is facing a fierce chal-
lenge from one of the original researchers, Dr. Thulborn. In other words, don't grab
an eraser just yet, as the controversy may not be resolved.
ThestoryofLarkQuarryanditsdinosaurtracksillustratesverywellaconstant
feature of science, which is that it is always evolving. This basic principle certainly
has been realized in a grand way with evolutionary theory, gravitational theory,
plate tectonic theory, and quantum theory. Lots of testing, scrutinizing, and arguing
took place before the majority of the worldwide scientific community accepted any
of these broad-sweeping, unified explanations for much of how our world works.
But these theories also underwent considerable changes—an ongoing process.
The same standard applies to more focused hypotheses of all shapes and sizes,
includingthoseconcerningdinosaurtracksandothertracefossils,whichisthatnew
evidenceorperspectivescanmodifythese,makingforbetterfits.Alongthoselines,
in science we do not prove, we disprove, meaning that old stories are sometimes
revised in the face of novel finds. Furthermore, answers invariably generate more
questions, meaning that although we may get ever so much closer to the truth with
eachinvestigation,wealsokeepinmindthatwemayneverquitereachitabsolutely,
especially when we deal with events of the distant geologic past.
The overturning oflong-held paleontological hypotheses bytrace fossils is not
uncommon,either.Asmentionedpreviously,fossiltracksreportedfromPolanddat-
ing to the Early and Middle Triassic Period (about 245
mya
) indicated that the im-
mediate ancestors to dinosaurs were extant earlier than previously thought. In my
own research in 2009, I proposed the oldest known dinosaur burrows in Cretaceous
