Thousands of Dinosaur Footprints Preserved by Laser Technology
Thousands of fossilized dinosaur tracks have been preserved using digital laser technology — from gigantic Sauropods to Tyrannosaurus rexes, that walked the Earth millions of years ago — for a quarry face in the eastern Pyrenees in Spain that is covered in tracks made by Cretaceous dinosaurs, reports Fox News.
These trackways of footprints have been preserved since the Cretaceous Period from more than 65 million years ago. Photo credit University of Manchester in England.
The footprints range in length from less than an inch to more than three feet, spanning steep surfaces that scientists say once was flat when the dinosaurs lived.
“Many of the tracks can be clearly defined as depressions on the now-tilted surface — a result of uplift during mountain building events — on which the animal once walked.” said lead scientist Phil Manning a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England,.
“We are very interested in studying tracks of dinosaurs that walked on two legs, given there is no modern analog that would help us understand the locomotion of such animals.” Manning told LiveScience.
Paleontologists spotted the prints in the early to mid-1980s at the Fumanya site, in central Catalonia (in the eastern Pyrenees). But because the sediment was so delicate they couldn’t get close enough to examine the impressions.
“Due to the fragile environment and the sensitivity of the site, we were not permitted direct contact, and therefore all measurements had to be taken remotely.” said post-graduate student Karl Bates of the University of Manchester, who did some of the study’s field work.
Manning and his colleagues used a laser scanning system called RIEGL to preserve the tracks, which used laser beams to scan the foot printed quarry face. The beams reflect off the surfaces and carry detailed information back to a receiver. The scanning device combines the beam information with images from a built-in digital camera and GPS for precise locations.
By feeding the data into a software program, the scientists created a 3-D model of the area.
“The computer-generated trackways we have created preserve important information on the locomotion of dinosaurs, which can be properly accessed for the first time.” Manning said. “The relative position of each track helps constrain how the animal that left the track walked.”
The team will make simple measurements between quadrupeds’ fore and hind tracks, as well as calculate the distance between shoulders and hips to refine locomotion models.
The scanner was also used at another site in Montana, known as the Hell Creek Formation, famous for its T. rex fossils.
Dinosaur Bones and Tracks
Geologist Matt Morgan reveals evidence of dinosaur footprints and tracks at another location at Dinosaur Lake / Ridge, Purgatory Canyon, Colorado, in this documentary created by Mark Kapsolon. The Purgatory site is the largest dinosaur track site in the US.
Kapsolon writes that this was his first venture into DV editing in 2001, using a consumer canon camera and a wireless microphone.
The video was not completed, as Kapsolon lost the remaining footage in a hard-drive crash. Bummer. It’s still a highly informative video.
Artwork in the video was created by Joe Tucciarone.
[...] « Thousands of Dinosaur Footprints Preserved by Laser Technology Ancient Royal Temple Unearthed in Path of Ireland Highway May 16th, 2007 under Weird [...]
[...] stories: Thousands of Dinosaur Footprints Preserved by Laser Technology Museum Says Dinosaurs Were On Noah’s Ark Creation Museum Update – Dinosaurs Were On Noah’s Ark [...]