Dinosaur Tracks Make Impression : Footprints in Connecticut Park Are a Source of Mystery

Now that Lew Schuler, 62, has retired as vice president of an aerospace company, he is doing some of the things he has wanted to do for a long time.

Like pouring 10 pounds of plaster of Paris into a 185-million-year-old footprint of an 8-foot-tall, 20-foot-long carnivorous dinosaur.

Schuler is one of 50,000 visitors from all over the world who have come to Dinosaur State Park this year to make castings of dinosaur tracks.

“So far as we know this is the only place on Earth where the public comes on a regular basis to make impressions of dinosaur footprints,” said geologist Richard Krueger, 43, curator-director of the state park near Rocky Hill, Conn.

For Schuler’s wife, Jean, “Making the dinosaur casts is even more exciting than when I made brass rubbings in Westminster Abbey.” The Schulers, of North Granby, Conn., were visiting the park with Mrs. Schuler’s sister, Marjorie Peck of Worthington, Minn.

500 Dinosaur Tracks

Dinosaur State Park has been set aside to display and protect the largest concentration of dinosaur tracks known to exist. A $1-million, 40-foot-high geodesic dome houses 500 of the dinosaur tracks. Another 1,500 footprints were reburied and preserved for future study. Thousands of other prehistoric tracks are believed to be in the bedrock near the surface in the immediate area.

Bus loads of children from throughout New York and New England come here during the school year. Buses also bring senior citizens, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and others.

Casts of the dinosaur footprints from the park are in classrooms throughout the country and many foreign nations, museums and scientific laboratories.

They hang from walls and homes, are embedded in fireplaces, garden walkways, patios and dens and used as doorstops.

Some bronze the footprints. Others paint them. Some gild them and give them as 50th wedding anniversary gifts, birthday and Mother’s Day presents.

Nearly every store in Rocky Hill stocks 10-pound sacks of plaster of Paris, priced from $3.50 to $7, ready to sell to park visitors. It takes a 10-pound bag and a fourth cup of cooking oil to make one casting.

Edward McCarthy, a heavy equipment operator, discovered the dinosaur tracks by accident on Aug. 23, 1966, when his bulldozer flipped over a large sandstone rock containing a couple of footprints.

Two years later the site was set aside as a state park. It has also been designated a National Natural Landmark by the National Parks Service in recognition of its outstanding scientific significance.

“We sometimes call it a dinosaur disco,” laughed Krueger, who has been in charge of the park almost since the beginning, “because of the great profusion of prints and the fact they head out straight ahead in almost every direction.”

The tracks are of one species of dinosaur, a biped with three toes on each foot. The three-toed impressions range from 10 to 16 inches in length.

Identity a Mystery

The identity of the animal that made the prints remains a mystery. No skeletal remains of the beast have ever been discovered. Its closest relative would be a carnivorous dinosaur called dilophosaurus whose skeletal remains and footprints have been found in Northern Arizona in rocks the same age as those found here. The footprints of the dilophosaurus and the tracks here are quite similar.

The size of the footprints here and the fact that the tracks are 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet apart indicate the adult animals were about 8 feet tall and 20 feet long.

As he talked about the tracks and pointed out various features about them in the huge display under the geodesic dome, Krueger commented: “By examining these impressions you detect how elegant these dinosaurs must have been as they walked or ran along, picking their feet up with their curled toes. They weren’t clumsy. They were agile. They walked as chickens do, the way chickens pick up their feet and put them down.

“I would love to go back in time to see these marvelous beasts. . . .”

Krueger said the similarity to bird tracks is amazing even though “dinosaurs did not evolve into birds until 40 million years later.” Similar footprints were first discovered in Connecticut in the 1830s. Scientists at the time thought they were bird tracks and said they belonged to giant wading birds. They called them the prehistoric birds of Connecticut.

Where dinosaur tracks are found dinosaur bones usually do not exist. Where dinosaur bones are discovered there generally are few if any tracks.

With fossils there is rapid burial. With tracks it is a slow process with fine sediments settling in the prints.

“We believe these tracks were made within a relatively short span of time, two weeks at the most perhaps,” Krueger explained. “The animals left their foot impressions in the mud. A flood of water inundated the prints covering them with sediments.

“Several thin layers of sediments were deposited. The whole area continued sinking for millions of years, the footprints and the sedimentary deposits within them changing into sandstone.”

Footprints Photographed

When all 2,000 tracks were uncovered and exposed in 1966 and 1967, Peter Galton, a professor and dinosaur expert at the University of Bridgeport, Conn., photographed the entire area and every footprint.

He took hundreds of photographs to learn about the beasts, and next month he will begin a yearlong sabbatical devoted largely to a study of the impressions.

“I hope to determine how many dinosaurs made the tracks by measuring each print to match them to a particular animal. The prints were not all made simultaneously. Some prints are very deep, made when the ground was extremely soggy. Others are of medium depth, some shallow and some faint marks. They were made in progressively drying surfaces,” Galton said.

He is convinced the animals were running and hopes to be able to verify that theory by mathematically determining the speed at which they were traveling in relation to stride lengths.

“There are no impressions of any of the animals falling over, laying down or attacking one another. There is one set of prints where a dinosaur bent down and touched the ground with both hands between its feet,” he added.

“Why the footprints go off in all different directions is a great mystery.”

Nearly a fourth of the park’s visitors take time to make casts of the giant footprints. There are six dinosaur tracks in an outside casting area where the impressions are made.

Several times during the year, groups of blind children and adults come to the park. For them making dinosaur footprint casts is a special treat. They can feel the tracks left by the prehistoric beasts and can feel the castings they make.

“It’s amazing how popular dinosaurs are,” park curator Krueger said. “You do know dinosaur displays are the most popular exhibits in museums anywhere you go in the world.”

Making casts of the giant footprints is a testimonial to the popularity of the ancient animals. Throughout the summer and on weekends the rest of the year there are long lines of people waiting to make the plaster of Paris impressions.

Getting a Close Look

A boardwalk over the track way with the 500 giant footprints inside the park’s geodesic dome allows visitors to get a close-up view of the unique prehistoric event frozen in sandstone.

Dinosaur experts from Yale and other nearby universities are speakers at biweekly lectures held in the auditorium at the state park.

From time to time, Creationists drop by the park and contend the footprints are a hoax. The Creationists contend the world was created less than 10,000 years ago. They don’t believe in dinosaurs or evolution.