Impressions from a Lost World: The Discovery of Dinosaur Footprints

Paluxy River Dinosaur Chase Sequence

This video shows a dinosaur footprint trackway by the Paluxy River in Glen Rose, Texas, that no longer existed by the time the animation was created. The abstract of the paper by paleontologists Peter L. Falkingham, Karl T. Bates, and James O. Farlow describes their work as follows:

"It is inevitable that some important specimens will become lost or damaged over time, conservation is therefore of vital importance. The Paluxy River dinosaur tracksite is among the most famous in the world. In 1940, Roland T. Bird described and excavated a portion of the site containing associated theropod and sauropod trackways. This excavated trackway was split up and housed in different institutions, and during the process a portion was lost or destroyed. We applied photogrammetric techniques to photographs taken by Bird over 70 years ago, before the trackway was removed, to digitally reconstruct the site as it was prior to excavation. The 3D digital model offers the opportunity to corroborate maps drawn by R.T. Bird when the tracksite was first described. More broadly, this work demonstrates the exciting potential for digitally recreating palaeontological, geological, or archaeological specimens that have been lost to science, but for which photographic documentation exists."

The full paper from which this was taken can be found at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.009324