The dimples on the rock faces are dinosaur tracks. A single big meat-eating dinosaur track, likely from a tyrannosaur. Based on the tracks, a range of juvenile to adult dinosaurs frequented the location over thousands of years.” Our track research in the park compliments our work on dinosaur bones we gather in northern Alaska, along the Colville River,” Druckenmiller stated. “Denali National Park and Preserve is a world-class area for dinosaur tracks.
In the beginning glance, the website is average in the context of the parks large landscape: simply a layered, rocky outcrop rising 20-some stories from its base.
” When our coworkers initially went to the website, they saw a dinosaur trackway at the base of this huge cliff,” said Pat Druckenmiller, senior author of the paper and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. “When we initially went out there, we didnt see much either.”
Stewart remembered being initially underwhelmed when he approached the website at the end of a seven-hour hike. Then dusk approached, and the group took another appearance.
A single big meat-eating dinosaur track, likely from a tyrannosaur. The image was made by taking several images from different angles to produce a three-dimensional view of the track, accentuated by colors. Credit: Image by Dustin Stewart
” When the sun angles itself perfectly with those beds, they just blow up,” he said. “Immediately all of us were simply flabbergasted, and after that Pat stated, Get your electronic camera. We were freaking out.”
In the Late Cretaceous Period, the cliffs that make up The Coliseum were sediment on flat ground near what was likely a watering hole on a big flood plain. As Earths tectonic plates buckled and clashed to form the Alaska Range, the previously flat ground folded and tilted vertically, exposing the cliffs covered with tracks.
The tracks are a mix of solidified impressions in the ancient mud and casts of tracks produced when sediment filled the tracks and then hardened.
” They are stunning,” Druckenmiller said. “You can see the shape of the toes and the texture of the skin.”
In addition to the dinosaur tracks, the research study group found fossilized plants, pollen grains, and evidence of freshwater shellfish and invertebrates.
” All these little clues created what the environment looked like as an entire,” Stewart said.
Close-up image on one wall showing various anxieties of hadrosaur footprints. The ice ax in the lower left of the frame is approximately 3 feet long, for scale. Credit: Photo by Patrick Druckenmiller
The location belonged to a big river system, he stated, with lakes and ponds nearby. The environment in the location was warmer than today, more like the Pacific Northwest. There were coniferous and deciduous trees and an understory of horsetails and ferns.
Based on the tracks, a variety of juvenile to adult dinosaurs frequented the location over countless years. Most common were large plant-eating duck-billed and horned dinosaurs. The group also recorded rarer predators, including raptors and tyrannosaurs, in addition to little wading birds.
Every year, countless people visit Denali National Park and Preserve to experience the sensational natural landscape and environment, Druckenmiller said. “Its incredible to understand that around 70 million years earlier, Denali was equally outstanding for its flora and fauna.
” It was forested and it was teeming with dinosaurs,” he stated. “There was a tyrannosaur running around Denali that was often times the size of the greatest brown bear there today. There were raptors. There were flying reptiles. There were birds. It was an incredible environment.”
Preserving fossil sites like The Coliseum is a fundamental part of the National Park Services mission, said Denny Capps, the parks geologist.
” On one hand, we need to secure first-rate fossil sites like The Coliseum from disturbance and theft,” he stated. “On the other hand, we motivate visitors to check out for fossils in their geologic context to better grasp the evolution of landscapes and environments through time, while leaving them undisturbed for others to appreciate.”
Druckenmiller prepares to continue teaming up with the National Park Service to study The Coliseum and other track sites.
” Our track research study in the park compliments our work on dinosaur bones we gather in northern Alaska, along the Colville River,” Druckenmiller said. “Denali National Park and Preserve is a first-rate location for dinosaur tracks. There is a life time of checking out left to do, and I can just question what other surprises wait for.”
Recommendation: “Vertebrate ichnology and palaeoenvironmental associations of Alaskas biggest recognized dinosaur tracksite in the Cretaceous Cantwell Formation (Maastrichtian) of Denali National Park and Preserve” by Dustin G. Stewart, Patrick S. Druckenmiller, Gregory M. Erickson, Jeff A. Benowitz, Denny M. Capps, Cassandra L. Knight, Kevin C. May and Paul J. McCarthy, 27 July 2023, Historical Biology.DOI: 10.1080/ 08912963.2023.2221267.
The research study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Park Service.
The once-horizontal rocks are now nearly vertical, exposing lots of hundreds of tracks on flatirons of resistant rock. The dimples on the rock faces are dinosaur tracks.
Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks have actually found and recorded the biggest known single dinosaur track site in Alaska. Located in Denali National Park and Preserve, this amazing area has been called “The Coliseum” by the experts.
Covering the equivalent of one-and-a-half football fields, The Coliseum is a remarkable assemblage of rock layers, each protecting a wealth of dinosaur footprints. This website provides a thorough historic account of various dinosaur species that flourished in what is now known as Interior Alaska, roughly 70 million years earlier. The researchers findings and in-depth descriptions of The Coliseum exist in a paper recently released in the journal Historical Biology.
” Its not simply one level of rock with tracks on it,” stated Dustin Stewart, the papers lead author and a previous UAF college student who released the paper as part of his masters thesis. “It is a series through time. Up previously, Denali had other track websites that are understood, but absolutely nothing of this magnitude.”
