125-Million-Year-Old Dino Tracks Discovered in Utah

A hiker discovered a set of 125-million-year-old dinosaur footprints in Utah, and soon the public will be given the chance to see these extraordinary tracks.

These ancient footsteps were first discovered by a Moab resident in 2009, but the location of the discovery site has been kept secret.

Scientists from the University of Colorado and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), as well as volunteers, began excavating the site last year to prepare it for its public debut.

"It's tracks of the past, really, and it's very cool to be trying to preserve that information," science writer and volunteer Allyson Mathis told KLS TV.

Over 200 of these well-preserved tracks have been unearthed so far, kept intact after being left in mud that hardened into rock.

"And at least one case where there's 17 consecutive prints from the same animal," volunteer Lee Shenton added. "I think it's going to be something really important. It has at least a dozen different animals."

Among them, as far as they can tell, is an ancient crocodile that left behind its dragging tail markings, and a three-toed meat eater similar to the ferocious Utahraptor.

What's even more amazing for scientists is that for some of these species - reportedly from the Cretaceous Period - a single bone has never been found, limiting their understanding of these ancient dinos. But the newly discovered tracks offer their own glimpse into the life of a dinosaur.

"I really love track sites because they record behavior of dinosaurs in ways that the bones or body fossils cannot," Mathis told Deseret News.

Volunteers are working hard to sweep, scrape and brush away what's been hiding these fascinating footprints so that the BLM can document them with 3-D photography.

"And then we'll be able to replicate any of the tracks, should they ever be damaged or destroyed," BLM paleontologist Rebecca Hunt-Foster told KLS TV. "And, also, people will be able to study them without doing damage to the actual surface."

The BLM is currently raising funds to build a trail to the dinosaur tracks, which will hopefully be available for public viewing in October.