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Bureau of Land Management
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BLM-Wyoming's Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite:
An Ancient Shoreline Comes to Light
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Bureau of Land Management
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Imagine dinosaurs lumbering along an ocean shoreline 165 million years ago, searching for a bite of lunch from the debris left by the last high tide. The ground is soft mud, probably similar in consistency to cement just starting to harden, and their feet sink down, leaving clear tracks of every step they take. After the mud hardens, the tracks are perfectly preserved; gradually, fine sand fills them. Over eons, layer upon layer of sediment is deposited and lithifies, burying the tracks. Then, as more time passes, erosional processes go to work removing those layers, finally exposing the tracks that were made all those millions of years ago.
 At first glance, the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite looks like any other dry streambed in the West . . . |
 . . . but a closer look reveals dinosaur tracks on the surface of a limestone layer. |
A recent discovery of such rare fossil footprints on public lands near the Red Gulch/Alkali Backcountry Byway, in the area of Shell, Wyoming, could alter current views about the Sundance Formation and the paleoenvironment of the Middle Jurassic Period. The tracks were discovered in the summer of 1997 by Erik Kvale, a research geologist from the Indiana Geological Survey, while he was on an outing with friends and family. They'd stopped along BLM's Red Gulch/Alkali National Back Country Byway for a closer look at some intriguing ripple-marked limestone. Kvale was raised in the Shell area and has studied the geologic wonders of Wyoming's Bighorn Basin since childhood. So when a relative asked if dinosaur tracks might be found in that particular geologic formation, Kvale, staring in astonishment at what he knew shouldn't have been there, replied, "No-o . . . but here's one right in front of me."
| Scientists are excited about this find for several reasons. For one thing, the tracks were formed during the Middle Jurassic Period (160 million to 180 million years old). Until these tracks were found, most scientists believed that the whole Bighorn Basin had been submerged by the Sundance Sea during that period; but sea-dwelling creatures certainly don't leave footprints. The dinosaur tracks were clearly made just at the shoreline of the ancient sea; nearby, there must have been large areas of dry land to support not only the dinosaurs but other animals and plants. Today, the site's Byway location makes the trackway easily accessible for scientific research, educational opportunities, and public viewing. |
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 BLM-Wyoming helped to assemble a team of scientific experts to study the tracks and the rock layers that contain them. |
 Comprised of paleontologists and geologists from several institutions, the Red Gulch Science Team will integrate data from several earth science disciplines to generate information about the geographic and geologic contexts of the tracks. |
Just what kinds of dinosaurs made these tracks? Middle Jurassic dinosaur skeletons are extremely rare in North America, and there are only a few areas known to contain tracks similar to those at Red Gulch. So with few fossils for comparison, the identities of the Red Gulch track-makers remain to be established. The tracks, which could number in the thousands over the site's 40 acres, suggest a very large and possibly diverse group of dinosaurs. At first glance, scientists speculate that one group may have been theropods, meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on their hind legs.
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BLM's Worland District will manage the site and coordinate research so that scientists can effectively study the area's paleontology, geology, and paleoenvironment. Kvale and scientists from several academic institutions, including Dartmouth College and the Universities of Wyoming, Indiana, and Kansas, will visit the site this summer to measure, study, and map the dinosaur tracks. They plan to determine each track-maker's species, its stride length, its speed, what it ate, and how it lived - and they hope to learn all of this from footprints alone! The researchers will also examine the trackway rock itself to learn more about the dinosaurs' physical environment. |
The tracks can best be viewed when thrown into visual relief by the long shadows of morning and evening. In order to preserve the tracks for future study, visitors are asked to refrain from digging, touching, rubbing, or standing on them. Although they have existed for millions of years, now that the tracks have been re-exposed to the elements they are already eroding.
If you would like additional information or to arrange a group visit to the Red Gulch tracksite, please contact the Worland District Office at 101 South 23rd Street, P.O. Box 119, Worland, WY 82401 or telephone (307) 347-5100.
For more information and a virtual tour of the tracksite, please also visit:
BLM-Worland Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite Page
http://www.wy.blm.gov/rgdt/
University of Wyoming Geological Museum Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite Page
http://www.uwyo.edu/geomuseum/dinotrax.htm
"Set in Stone," a BLM paleontology teaching resource
http://www.blm.gov/education/00_resources/articles/paleo/
Last Updated: July 15, 2003
For questions about our programs contact Bibi Booth
This site is maintained by Kevin Flynn
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