Possible baby dinosaur tracks discovered near Denver
mongabay.com
May 24, 2007
A researcher may have discovered “incredibly rare” dinosaur tracks of baby stegosaurs near downtown Denver, reports the Denver Post.
Matt Mossbrucker, director of the Morrison Natural History Museum, said the tracks were unearthed in the foothills west of Denver in 2006.
“I think because these sites are so close to the Denver metro area, they often get overlooked for more appealing, exotic sites,” Mossbrucker told Reuters. “But why would I want to go to China or Patagonia when I have this type of geology right here?”
Stegosaurs, an armored quadrupedal dinosaur that fed on plants, is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs. It weighed about six tons and averaged around 9 meters (30 ft) long and 4 meters (14 ft) tall.
Reuters reports that Mossbrucker’s are controversial–some paleontologists aren’t convinced that the tracks were left by stegosaur babies. Others say the find doesn’t really matter much.
“At the end of the day, I wouldn’t call it a huge scientific discovery because we know to expect tracks,” Reuters quoted Kirk Johnson, vice president of research at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as saying. “It’s not adding a huge amount of information.”
This article used information from the Denver Post and the A.P.
