Last week at the park we did something I never thought I would hear myself say...we went looking for dinosaurs!
One of my fellow interns, Lindsey, is a Geology major at William & Mary. This summer she is researching the geology of the park and how it affected the outcomes of the two influential Civil War battles that took place here. Pretty cool, right?
During one of her field days at the Portici Creek she saw a rock that had some weird markings imprinted on it but couldn’t quite figure out what the shape was. Since removing the rocks from their “natural environment” is frowned upon, Lindsey took several pictures of the rock and moved on with her observations.
It wasn’t until the next week, when Lindsey had a chance to take a better look at the pictures, that she realized what the markings were in the rock face...FOOTPRINTS! And not just any footprints, possibly DINOSAUR footprints. She emailed a few experts, who agreed with her suspicions, and they all asked for more pictures. So a few of us from the office pulled out our waders and headed to the creek to hunt down the rock again.
One of my fellow interns, Lindsey, is a Geology major at William & Mary. This summer she is researching the geology of the park and how it affected the outcomes of the two influential Civil War battles that took place here. Pretty cool, right?
During one of her field days at the Portici Creek she saw a rock that had some weird markings imprinted on it but couldn’t quite figure out what the shape was. Since removing the rocks from their “natural environment” is frowned upon, Lindsey took several pictures of the rock and moved on with her observations.
It wasn’t until the next week, when Lindsey had a chance to take a better look at the pictures, that she realized what the markings were in the rock face...FOOTPRINTS! And not just any footprints, possibly DINOSAUR footprints. She emailed a few experts, who agreed with her suspicions, and they all asked for more pictures. So a few of us from the office pulled out our waders and headed to the creek to hunt down the rock again.
We were out in the field for a couple hours and turned over countless rocks but we were not successful in our search. We figure that a few rainstorms probably washed the rock-in-question away.
However, we did find several other fossil imprints of interest on rocks.
All in all, it was a beautiful day outside and we saw a variety of other neat things.
All in all, it was a beautiful day outside and we saw a variety of other neat things.