Dinosaur State Park, CT

   

A diorama of Dilophosaurus

   I was supposed to go hiking up in New Hampshire with my buddy Adam on Thursday, but once again Mother Nature was not kind. We knew that in the White Mountains that cold or even snow this time of year could cancel our trip. However, three days of a (warmish) rain was not on our bingo card. So we needed to come up with a plan B. The best I could come up with was visit our old boss at his new job at Cabela's. Adam had a much better idea. He suggested we go to Connecticut and look at the dinosaur tracks.

   In 1966 while bulldozing to build a foundation for a Dept of Transportation building a worker noticed strange markings on some of the stones. Scientists were called and they discovered fossilized dinosaur tracks. The governor of Connecticut immediately named the area a state park.

   The park centers around a dome to protect the dinosaur footprints. They had been buried beneath six feet of topsoil for 200 million years. Exposing them to New England weather could and would crack rocks with frost heaves, wind, and rain. So the state built a dome to keep everything dry. 

   Inside the dome there are seven hundred and fifty footprints. They are of different sizes and some are better preserved than others. They are all from the same dinosaur. No bones were found but by the footprints it was a three toed carnivore with a sharp middle claw. It stood six feet at the hip and weighed about a thousand pounds. It was roughly twenty feet long. There are bones in the United States of a dinosaur from that time period that fits that description named Dilophosaurus. If the prints are not from that dinosaur, it would be a close cousin.

   

Fossilized dinosaur footprints

   The cost to enter is six dollars and they are closed on Mondays. The dome has a few reptiles and amphibians. There are some turtles, a gecko, and some snakes. There is an auditorium where a movie is played explaining how the park is formed and what they know about the dinosaurs. It was very interesting. There are other programs also. We sat in on an animal encounter. The two animals were a  Leopard Gecko and a Ball Python. The girl that talked about the animals was very knowledgeable. It was a little awkward since we were the only two people in the room with her. 

   Next we went to the main event, the dinosaur tracks. You walk on a bridge above the tracks looking down on them. As I said some are more pronounced than others. It is speculated they were made over the span of a couple weeks and not all from the same day. If you or I walked in soft mud today, and our friend walked in the mud a week from now, our tracks would have started to fill in or wash away, while our friend's track would be fresh. It is the  same with these tracks. It seems as though this was just a place for this dinosaur to pass through. They were not a herd because the tracks do not all go in the same direction. It is much more likely random individuals walked across the mud at separate times. On the bridge there was a short talk with a state park ranger and he answered a lot of questions by Adam and myself. 

   

A well formed example

   Outside there are hiking trails and we did hike since it wasn't raining when we finished the indoor stuff. We walked below some basalt mounds through the woods. We found a Red Backed Salamander and a dead mouse. There was a bat box and to my surprise there were a few bats in it that hadn't migrated south. 

  In all we spent roughly three hours at the park before heading home and getting a pizza along the way. Dinosaur State Park is south of Hartford. From Providence it is an hour forty minute drive. There wasn't any traffic but we hit the Hartford area after the morning rush. Without a doubt seeing the dinosaur footprints was worth doing!

More photos below

The main building built to protect the fossils

There were other fossils in the museum not from the site

This Kingsnake, and most of the animals were 
surrendered pets

Red Backed Salamander

Bat box

with bats inside. Most likely Big Brown Bats