Not the Biggest Man on Campus, but Surely the Biggest Foot [why is a TX dinosaur track in B'klyn?]

NY Times ^ | August 20, 2005 | MICHAEL BRICK

[Pharmboy]

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Wayne G. Powell, chairman of the geology department
at Brooklyn College, with the track of an
Acrocanthosaurus, top, and a larger one from a
Pleurocoelus. Scientists thought the block was a replica.

Here is a good way to hide dinosaur tracks: Wait tens of millions of years while the footsteps fossilize under a shallow sea that will later become Texas, dig up the tracks just before World War II, put plaster around the sides, paint the whole thing a whimsical muddy red, take it to Brooklyn and bolt it to a classroom wall with an unadorned case.

By accident, this method worked until just this summer for Roland T. Bird, a Harley-riding excavator who called himself a dinosaur hunter. When Brooklyn College started renovating its lecture halls in May, scientists began packing what they had assumed was a case containing a plaster cast of dinosaur tracks, a teaching tool held in such regard that it was often obscured by a projector screen.

Removing the case, they found that the block on the wall of Room 3123, so phony-looking it could be mistaken for something carbon-frozen in "The Empire Strikes Back," was a real rock embedded with tracks more than 100 million years old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and holding immense archaeological value.

[Pharmboy]

Can Texas get this back if they wanted it for one of their museums? Any dinosaur lawyers out there?

[Pharmboy]

No need to ping your lists, but I thought you guys would find this story interesting.

[Miss Marple]

archaeology:The scientific study of the physical evidence of past human societies recovered through excavation.

paleontology:The study of life in past geologic time, based on fossil plants and animals and including phylogeny, their relationships to existing plants, animal, and environments, and the chronology of the Earth's history.

I cannot believe that the New York Times is so ignorant that they think this discovery has ANY "archaeological value." It has immense paleontological value. To an archaeologist, this has NO value (unless there are human artifacts embedded with the dinosaur footprint).

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks. Most interesting.

[Pharmboy]

Yes indeed...I noticed that but let it go. Thank you for mentioning. I did use the paleo term in key words...

[muawiyah]

Since we usually engage archaeology when dealing with pre-literate societies, and considering the fact that the New York City crowd couldn't tell the difference between a block of limestone and a plaster cast, the NYT use of the word archaeology may well have been inadvertently correct!

We now know more about intellectuals in New York than we ever wished ~ or needed to know.

[Miss Marple]

Well, I think it falls more into cultural anthropology, but your point is well-taken.

[carumba]

Wait tens of millions of years while the footsteps fossilize under a shallow sea...

This seems implausible, where is Velikofsky when you need him?

[AliVeritas]

I lived in Brooklyn...

With all the cavemen there were bound to be dinosaurs.

No surprise.

[The_Victor]

I cannot believe that the New York Times is so ignorant that they think this discovery has ANY "archaeological value." It has immense paleontological value. To an archaeologist, this has NO value (unless there are human artifacts embedded with the dinosaur footprint).

Reporters rarely understand what they are writing about. The entire "journalistic" community is an utter scam. I'm an engineer working in the space industry, and journalists almost never get the facts correct on anything technical in my line of work.

It shouldn't surprise us though, you gotta figure that a degree in Journalism is little more than a degree in English with with less emphasis on literature. How much technical expertise would you expect from these people? I know, I know, they should at least get the facts straight, but then that's what Free Republic is for.

[The_Victor]

*laughing*

The "journalists" would be all concerned about the number of sentences I just ended with prepositions.

[ken5050]

He looks like the guy on the "West Wing"..

[ml/nj]

Wait tens of millions of years while the footsteps fossilize under a shallow sea that will later become Texas

These guys are so full of themselves. I cannot walk out to my backyard and find deer tracks that were left there two days ago. They want us to believe that water was washing over these footprints for even a week and they didn't disappear?

ML/NJ

[mewzilla]

Mr. Acrocanthosaurus. He's a cutie.

[Just mythoughts]

I am boycotting the Times, and I refuse to "sign-in".

Does the article say what part of Texas this track was removed from?

I have seen the tracks near Glen Rose, Tx, in and along the Paluxy stream and they are amazing.

[mewzilla]

Bet Pleurocoelus was dinner...

[Condor51]

I am boycotting the Times, and I refuse to "sign-in".

You don't have to - use BugMeNot
http://www.bugmenot.com/

[Pharmboy]

In the book, Mr. Bird, who dropped out of junior high school and worked as a cowboy before barnstorming the country on his motorcycle showing archaeological finds for the American Museum of Natural History, described discoveries in the limestone around the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Tex. The trackways there, now famous as the site where some creationists claim human footprints were laid contemporaneously with dinosaur tracks, have been preserved as Dinosaur Valley State Park, so fossils can no longer be removed.

Yep...

[Just mythoughts]

Thank you very much.

[Condor51]

I read the entire article and either MICHAEL BRICK is a certified idiot or his 'humor' must only be appreciated by his mother.

"...The smaller one may have come from an Acrocanthosaurus, a sharp-toothed monster Pleurocoeluses sought to avoid meeting in dark cretaceous alleys."

Hardy-har-ha. (blah, puke, spit)