Posted on 10/18/2005 7:19:16 AM PDT by Junior
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Researchers have found tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur with birdlike characteristics in northern Wyoming and are looking for bones and other remains in order further identify and name it.
"It was about the size of an ostrich, and it was a meat-eater," said Debra Mickelson, a University of Colorado graduate student in geological sciences. "The tracks suggest it waded along the shoreline and swam offshore, perhaps to feed on fish or carrion."
The tracks indicate a dinosaur that was about 6 feet tall and lived about 165 million years ago along an ancient inland sea, Mickelson said in a university news release.
"The swimming dinosaur had four limbs and it walked on its hind legs, which each had three toes," she said. "The tracks show how it became more buoyant as it waded into deeper water the full footprints gradually become half-footprints and then only claw marks."
Mickelson said research so far by herself and others supports the "conclusion that the dinosaurs were intentionally swimming out to sea, perhaps to feed."
Mickelson was presenting her findings at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting this week in Salt Lake City and was unavailable for comment.
The finding would be significant because so far no one has been able to prove that aquatic dinosaurs existed, Joanna Wright, assistant professor of geology at the University of Colorado-Denver, said Monday. There were swimming reptiles that are now extinct, Wright said.
Wright said she has not reviewed what Mickelson and other researchers involved have found, but she would be interested in seeing photos of the tracks.
The news has perked up the ears of some prominent paleontologists.
"I'm not a trackway specialist, but it sounds pretty cool to me," Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies and one of the nation's leading fossil hunters, said by telephone from Bozeman, Mont.
Horner said he was unaware of any previously discovered dinosaur tracks "where it actually goes from land into the water."
The unique tracks were found at a number of sites in northern Wyoming, including the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area along the Wyoming-Montana state line.
The tracks are embedded in a layer of rock known as the Middle Jurassic Bajocian Gypsum Spring Formation. Geologists believe an inland sea covered Wyoming and a large area of the western United States during the Jurassic period from about 157 million to 165 million years ago.
Mickelson said the unidentified dinosaur tracks are found among tracks left by many animals, including ancient crocodiles and marine worms, and are of different sizes.
The tracks suggest that the dinosaur traveled in packs and exhibited some variation in overall size, she said.
Mickelson collaborated her findings with researchers from CU-Boulder, Indiana University, Dartmouth College, Tennessee Technological University and the University of Massachusetts.
Well now that's convenient. You have to interpret evidence? You don't think that leaves a lot of room for error? Sheesh....
Hey, nobody can make you see. And you'll probably find that there aren't too many folks interested in trying either.
If I repeat that enough... can I do the talk circuit too? I'm can be pretty good at just repeating what others have said if you want me to......
Methinks you're trolling. Consider yourself on Virtual Ignore.
We've got big bird foot prints... and we've got ostriches now. Since we get to interpret evidence.... I'd say that at some point in time ostriches lost a toe.... or that at one time there were big birds like an ostriche... only with 3 toes.
Yet you'll believe that it swims unlike any known dinosaur.
Big birds didn't exist 165 million years ago... and we find big bird tracks... just maybe "dating rocks" isn't as easy as you tend to think it is.
But scientists will never give up that sacred cow based on observation. Not in a million years.
Why not? Kent Hovind makes a pretty good living talking about things he doesn't remotely understand - what's one more?
:)
You should try your hand at Sunday-school tracts - you have a knack for just-so stories.
Yet you'll believe that it swims unlike any known dinosaur.
You're claiming that no dinosaur ever swam? What do you have to support that, I wonder...
Isn't that what the article says
.... "The finding would be significant because so far no one has been able to prove that aquatic dinosaurs existed, Joanna Wright, assistant professor of geology at the University of Colorado-Denver, said Monday.
Seriously.... which is more likely to be true? I mean, at least we've observed big birds before.... This article reads like a story. It says they want to name this thing. Maybe they'll name it Puff the Magic Dinosaur.
Puff the magic dinosaur..... lived by the sea.... and froliced in the ocean mist in a land called honoleeeeeeeeee
No. There are no aquatic dogs either, but you apparently think that should mean that dogs don't swim at all. Despite the fact that your own dog takes a dip every now and then.
If you just consider logic.... which is more logical... that it's foot prints from a big bird that existed long ago...
Well, since you're ignoring the fact that we know dinosaurs existed 165 million years ago, and there's absolutely no evidence of birds back then, I'd say that your claim to the "more logical" position is shaky, at best.
(The Mambo, I think!)
These are the demonstrations of the new discipline of pig-ignorantism. Be dumb, get a Nobel!
Wolf
No it was running from the water after land prey.
On land claw prints are an indication of a chase.
Just ask a hunter.
Yeah. Like the oil and gas company your homepage says you work for. (Strictly speaking geologists conducting exploration for oil companies don't "care" about the specific chronological ages of geologic strata. But they do regularly and extensively use theories such as biostratigraphy and lithostratigraphy which rely on distinguishing relative ages, and make no sense and wouldn't work unless there were time spans of some large magnitude involved.)
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