Ballroom Adult Sauropod Trail 2023
Sauropods are long-necked, four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs informally called "brontosaurs." Unlike the Main and Ozark Sites that contain multiple trails of parallel,
adult sauropod tracks heading south, the Ballroom site contains a single large sauropod trackway
proceeding in an eastern direction, which crosses two juvenile sauropod trails heading south. In the adult trail, each footprint is incredibly deep (often over
a foot below the track bed surface), with huge mud up-pushes (some over 18 above the print bottom) around the track margins. Most of the prints are so deep they
punch through to the softer blue-gray clay below the track bed. Because of their deptgh and mud slumping, none record individual digits or claws. Most of the prints
(with one exception) show no indication of the front prints (which are horse-shoe shapped when complete and considerably smaller than the large and oblong rear prints,
each of which are about about a meter (over a yard) long. The trackmaker is currently identified as Sauropseidon, although some workers consider it
indistingusihable from the previously named Paluxysaurus. The tracks are associated with the ichnospecies (track name) Brontopodus birdi (Farlow, 1986),
which refers to the track form independent of the animal that made it.
For photos of the same trail from previous years see: http://paleo.cc/paluxy/ballroom/Ballroom Menu.htm
Photos and text (C) 2023 Glen J. Kuban
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