The Stomping Grounds

Ravens circling in the sky at The Stomping Grounds.

Bill and I were sweating as we walked over the slickrock.  It was hot, and there was a cloud of Ravens circling overhead, calling. We were hiking in the Klondike Bluffs, just north of Moab, Utah.

We were on our way to see the dinosaur tracks at The Dinosaur Stomping Grounds.

Bill hiking over the slickrock to The Stomping Grounds.

This was a spur-of-the-moment trip, and I had perhaps not written the directions down as thoroughly as I might have.

Actually, they were awful.  I believe the text of my written directions ended with the phrases “23 miles north of Moab. Fork in road”. That was t - nothing further, not even an indication of which direction to drive at the fork in the road.

It’s a mystery to me why I didn’t write down more.

If these directions had been part of a medieval manuscript, their abrupt end and obviously incomplete nature would have suggested to you that the transcriber had perhaps been killed by Vikings before finishing his thought.

But, after a bit of fumbling, we were finally at the site.

There were huge numbers of dinosaur tracks here. The interpretive sign said that there were approximately 2300 (!) different prints within an area of about 2 acres.

Most of these tracks were left by a three-toed, carnivorous dinosaur. The slickrock was about 160 million years old, so the tracks were younger than Allosaurus and older than Tyrannosaurus. In fact, Tyrannosaurus was closer to us in time (about 66 million years before us) than Tyrannosaurus was to whatever had made these tracks (100 million years before Tyrannosaurus). It’s hard for me to get used to that idea, the vastness of geological time.

Paleontologists that studied the tracks decided that they were made by a meat-eating dinosaur named that they’ve named Megalosauripus. I don’t believe there are currently any know fossil bones of this dinosaur -  it’s known just from the tracks.

Three-toed dinosaur track at The Stomping Grounds.

Another three-toed dinosaur track. There are about 2,300 tracks within the two acres of this site.

Three-toed dinosaur tracks in the slickrock.

Three-toed dinosaur track in the foreground, tracks from other dinosaurs in the background.

Around 160 million years ago, this spot would have been the shallow coast of a large inland sea - The Sundance Sea. That’s a hard thing to imagine.

Fortunately, Brian Engh (the artist who illustrated some of the BLM’s interpretive signs) has put together a beautiful post on his blog, dontmesswithdinosaurs.com. His paintings give a wonderful perspective on what this area must have looked like back then. And having him describe the process he used was really, really interesting.

Bill at The Stomping Grounds. Tracks all over!

After twenty or thirty minutes of looking around, Bill and I headed down the trail and back to the jeep.

What a marvelous trip this was.