No, actually, I'm not sure it is a fraud. It is impossible to verify or debunk because it was never produced for examination. All that is available is photos taken by Don Patton, and his account of the circumstances - namely that the mean old ranchers around the site barred his reentry and wouldn't let him take the rock out:
"Access to this track is through five separate privately owned ranches. This track is about two hours from the nearest public road, at about 8,000 feet. We (Don Shocky, Dr. Baugh and myself) obtained a mining permit with a view to collecting the track for museum display. Of course, we thoroughly documented the track, by means of stereo photography, diagrams and casts. The matrix proved to be extremely hard. It wore out 13 concrete saw blades. Subsequent laboratory test indicated it was "limestone" with 30% silica.At this point the owner of the ranch adjacent to this BLM property appeared on the scene. He was very disturbed that we were removing the track and insisted that we leave. We had an official permit but he had the shotgun and won the very brief argument. His friends own the ranches through which one must pass to access the site. He and his friends have been absolutely unyielding in their determination to make sure no one comes close.
We tried, through the intercession of another friend of his, to no avail. This intercessor was able to go to the site and photograph this track and at least four others within a few hundred feet. I personally saw a photograph that he took of a right left sequence of four tracks that looked identical to the one we tried to excavate. However, his antagonistic friend made him promise not to allow the photograph to be duplicated or published. Perhaps you can imagine our frustration, but I doubt it.
A potential breakthrough has developed recently and we have reason to believe we will be allowed back on the property this year. That's all I should say at the moment. It is not time to stir up the opposition at the moment. I do believe that time will come soon.
Now something I would be very interested in, and as far as I can find has never been substantiated, is the details on the lab tests he claims were run on samples of that rock. Interestingly enough he claims that the results showed that the rock was limestone which I believe would be the aquatic portion of the shoreline where the trackways were created. Jerry MacDonald's discoveries were not in the limestone but rather in the mudstone that was the land side of the shoreline. For good reason - the tracks on the shore were preserved by successive layers of silty tidal deposits, while any underwater tracks (such as this human-like 'aquaman' print) would never survive long enough to be preserved by additional layers. But enough about the Zapata Track. On to the rest of your post....
You are quoting an often cited portion of that Smithsonian article, but I am curious if you have ever actually read the entire thing. If so, you might have missed the paragraph immediately after the one where the reporter suggests some tracks look bearlike:
MacDonald feels there must be a plausible explanation. These may be creatures whose gaits are unknown, or an animal's back feet may have obliterated its front footprints, or a running five-toed animal may have grazed the mud with only its middle three digits, then been gobbled up on the hoof, as it were. MacDonald himself believes that there were neither birds nor bears in the Permian period (although he tries to stay open-minded about such things). He suspects, however, that conventional theories about precisely who was walking around in Permian times, and how they did so, will end up being revised, perhaps extensively, once these tracks are studied in detail.
So as much as you (and whoever originated the out of context use of that article excerpt) would like to associate MacDonald with claiming that bears and birds left those trackways, it just isn't true. He simply acknowledged the reporter's comments that those tracks were reminiscent of ones made by animals we can relate to in the modern world. In other words a comparison of reference, not one of identification.
And finally, as for the posts purported to be by MacDonald himself, I cannot even begin to come up with a way to confirm if it was really him or an impostor. I would not consider any such posts to be supportive of any claim without some way of substantiating their veracity. However, I see nothing in that thread that strengthens your claim, so I'm not sure what your point is in bringing it up.
I know that MacDonald does not believe that there were bears or birds in the Permian, and I think the oft-quoted excerpt clearly indicates that he does not, but that does not negate what he actually found. The tracks are mysterious to him because of his views about evolutionary timescales. My point in bringing it up is stated very well by the next part of the Smithsonian article that you quoted:
"He suspects, however, that conventional theories about precisely who was walking around in Permian times, and how they did so, will end up being revised, perhaps extensively, once these tracks are studied in detail."What if there were bears in the Permian? Would such a find generate any doubt about Darwinian evolution itself in those predisposed to believe it? In other words, I just think that promises to abandon belief in Darwinian evolution itself based on a find like a mammal in the Permian are overstated.
Cordially,