USA: stegosaur footprints and other dinosaur remains in Colorado

Associated Press reports:

MORRISON, Colo. – A small town has again yielded big scientific finds as historians this week announced a new collection of dinosaur fossils and footprints.

Matt Mossbrucker, dinosaur researcher and director of the Morrison Natural History Museum, said two years of work in an old fossil mine in an area dubbed Dinosaur Ridge uncovered important finds overlooked for decades.

Among the discoveries were a rare combination of fossils and footprints sharing the same sandstone formations, and fossilized footprints that could have been made by previously unidentified dinosaurs.

“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Mossbrucker said.

The new evidence includes the first stegosaurus footprints found in Colorado, where the extinct beast is the state’s official fossil.

“When I see these tracks, I half expect to look up and see a stegosaurus walking away from me,” he said. “That’s how good they are.”

Morrison, about 15 miles west of Denver, is the site of the first dinosaur fossil and footprint discoveries in the West. Prints and bones dating back 150 million years, before the Rocky Mountains formed.

Stegosaur tail spikes: here.

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