Dinosaur Tracks

I shot this image back in the fall of 2012.  I was part of a work team from Dinosaur Valley Studios, of East Coulee, Alberta.  We were contracted to cast some tracks found in British Columbia.  These tracks were located in an active coal mine, and we had a lot of coordination to do in order to get in to the site.

This sloped surface is positioned at the top of a mountain ridge.  Though it is currently situated at a slope greater than 45 degrees, it was once a beach along a body of water.  It is not overly obvious in this photograph, but there are several sets of Sauropod tracks that travel across this slope on a diagonal from the bottom center to the upper right.  There are also several sets of raptor tracks that cross the main trackway.  At one point one of the Sauropods stopped and circled... perhaps being stalked by one of the raptors...?

Sauropods are a family of dinosaurs that originated in the early Jurassic and survived until the late Cretaceous.  They had very long necks, long tails, small heads [relative to the rest of their body] and four thick, pillar-like legs.  They are notable for the enormous size attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.  The individual footprints at this site are about the size of large washtubs.

The site was discovered when the coal company constructed an access road.  They were doing some test bores to determine the location and thickness of some of the coal seems in the area, looking to expand an existing mine.  When the heavy equipment pushed the road through, the top soil slumped away and left this slope exposed.  Unfortunately it was very loose shale.  From the time it was discovered until the time we were contracted to cast it, a period of about a year, it had deteriorated badly.  This photograph shows only a section of the site, and we were only able to cast a small portion of it.  We took off a very large silicone mold that was over 10 feet long and it only included two sauropod tracks and one raptor track.  It's nice to know that we were able to preserve a small part of it.  I understand that the site no longer exists.  I think it just weathered away but perhaps the mine has now expanded into this area.