The Lost World of Dinosaur Valley

Wednesday we set out bright and early to take the road to another world. The Lost World of The Dinosaurs. Yes we were going to stay at Dinosuar Valley State Park.

We had a good journey, using mostly back roads, which though only two lane were very straight and fast. We travelled through the Hill Country to the north of Austin. Worth mentioning is that when we passed through Hamilton we passed a cemetery and Sally had to do a double take as she saw a sign over a gravestone which said ‘Billy the Kid is Buried Here’. Sure enough this is where Billy the Kid is buried, but we didn’t get a picture of it.

We arrived at Dinosaur Valley State Park and were set up by 3.00, so set out to investigate what the place was about. The Paluxy river is a small (15m across) river that flows in a deep gully through the park. Along the banks on either side a hard layer of limestone is exposed, providing a flat shelf of rock, in which we should be able to find dinosaur footprints. We climbed down into the gully and used giant stepping stones to cross the river. There we found our first footprints, we could see them in the bottom of a small pool of water, clearly an elongated foot with three toes. We moved on and there, under the lee of the wall of the gully was a large flat area of rock, covered with footprints. The three toed clawed feet were the easiest to see, but then we picked out big round impressions in the rock. As we moved round we could see other tracks, clearly there were four impressions showing that the animals had been walking. The footprints are huge and of two different dinosaurs. One is a large, plant eating monster, with feet shaped like an elephant’s feet, but larger, these are the footprints of a sauropod, most likely the Paluxysaurus Jonesi.

The other footprints are of a 3 toed carnivore. We could see it was a carnivore as each toe ended in a huge curved claw, leaving marks in the rock 4 inches long. The footprint impressions were made some 110 million years ago, when what is now hard limestone was a hard, shelly clay, a bit like playdo. Most likely it formed the bottom of a shallow lake or estuary as once the mud had been stepped in it was never disturbed again, but covered over by more layers of shells and mud. Over millions of years the lime/clay became hard, but the layers above stayed soft and shaley. When the river eroded down to the soft shale it was easily washed away, leaving the hard limestone exposed, complete with its fabulous footprints.

Finding these dinosaur footprints was amazing. It was something I read about as a child. The whole afternoon had a air of Jurassic Park about it. To be actually treading here dinosaurs walked was very exciting. To be doing it in this beautiful river setting made it even more of an adventure.