Dilophosaurus feet

 Connecticut's geo-site is a little different from the other state's sites we've been to. Easy to find, it is the Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. I think we were the first people there this morning, other than the staff.  The main building, and the place where the geo-site is located, is under a geodesic dome.  I took a picture of it from the parking lot but there was so much vegetation that all you could see was the tip top of the building.

The approach to the building was great.  These grey segments (pictured below) represent the history of the planet earth, from it's formation 4.6 billion years ago to the present. The vast majority of the segments are blank, it isn't until you get to about .542 billion years ago, the Cambrian period, where there was an abrupt appearance of a wide variety of large, multi celled, skeletal life-forms, including representatives of every modern animal phylum.  Geologic time is so mind blowing!

Once inside the building, and what the dome covers, is a huge fossil track of large, three-toed footprints. In August, 1966, a bulldozer operator was excavating a rocky site for a state building.  He turned over a slab of gray sandstone and saw the footprints.  Officials, local scientists and the media were notified, and within a few weeks officials decided to preserve the site as a state park. Two seasons of careful excavation resulted in one of the largest on-site displays of dinosaur tracks in the world.

Fossil tracks are classified and named independently from fossil animals.  The Park's tracks are named Eubrontes. One of America's first geologists, Edward Hitchcock, invented that name and many others in his pioneering studies of Connecticut Valley tracks.  No remains of the dinosaur that made Eubrontes have been found in the Connecticut Valley.  However most scientists agree that the track maker was a carnivorous dinosaur similar in size and shape to Arizona's Dilophosaurus. The tracks range from 10 - 16 inches in length and are spaced 3.5 to 4.5 feet apart.

Segments in the walkway representing the history of earth.

Each footprint is supposed to represent 50 million years.

Follow the foot prints to the dome; you can just make it out behind the trees.

The fossil track was kept fairly dark, I don't know why, so Mr Spock had to squint a bit. There it is, behind the guys.

A cast showing the raised and the negative of the footprint. 

This is the creature that they think made the tracks.

Dilophosaurus in the diorama.

A flying dino after it's prey.

Frederick and Spock discussing the diorama.

That is the footprint of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Leslie, in the gift shop,was fascinated by our geo-site adventuring.

The ten acres that surround the Park's Exhibit Center have over 200 species and cultivars of conifers as well as katsuras, ginkgoes, magnolias and other living representatives of plant families which first appeared in the Age of Dinosaurs. 

This area is for people to come a make their own plaster cast of a footprint. Cool!

Footprints in a block of stone near the parking lot.

The rest of our day was a travel day.  Here is a rest stop in Connecticut.  Small state; small rest stop.