As one who has taught both vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology to college students and taken them on field trips to dig fossils, I was attracted to the recent story about billionaires who sought and purchased dinosaur fossils. * Apparently, owning a dinosaur fossil is a status symbol. Hmnnn…Do I belong to an exclusive club of the ultra rich?
Think I’ll go downstairs to stare at the giant dinosaur footprint that’s leaning against the wall. It’s quite heavy, so once I carried it into the house years ago, I haven’t moved it. I’m sorry to say that I haven’t identified the species other than to say it belongs to the theropods like T-Rex and that it, when I see other full skeletons, appears to be from an animal as large as a full grown Allosaurus, but it might be from a juvenile T-Rex. Its origin in Utah’s section of the Upper (Late) Jurassic Morrison Formation makes me think “Allosaurus.”
Dinosaur footprints aren’t dinosaurs, of course. They are “trace” fossils that are evidence of dinosaur presence and that sometimes reveal the herding of dinosaurs. Their spacing also can reveal both the size of the animal (by stride length and depth of the imprint) and its velocity (both the vector of travel and the speed). Often the footprints are easily separated from the matrix rock in which they are found. The reason is that the impression in soft sediment is later infilled by other sediments washed in or blown into the depression. Differences in particle (clast) size between the matrix and the infilling make a boundary of separation. The sizes and compositions of sediments in matrices and infilling, coupled sometimes with plant fossils also found in the area, reveal the nature of the original landscape the dinosaurs crossed. A great display of such environments can be seen at Dinosaur State Park and Connecticut’s dinosaur museum at Rocky Hill that houses Early (Lower) Jurassic footprints. *
So, I guess my trace fossil excludes me from the class of billionaires who own actual T-Rex heads and full skeletons though I do have a friend in that category of wealth. I do on occasion mention to guests that if they want to see the footprint, I’m happy to show them. As impressive as it is to most people, it doesn’t match for me the significance of an even older fossil in my possession, a stromatolite that dates to the Devonian Period (419.2-358.9 MA), that is, millions of years before the first dinosaurs like Alwalkeria maleriensis and Eoraptor walked around Argentina in the Triassic. The stromatolite is upon a cursory look, just a plain dark grey rock. It was formed as bacteria mats and fine sediments accumulated to form mushroom shapes in shallow water as they still do today in Shark Bay, Australia. If fossil age bears significance, I’m one up on owners of dinosaur skeletons.
Take that, you ultra wealthy showoffs with your younger Mesozoic fossils.
*https://nypost.com/2025/02/16/us-news/billionaires-are-bidding-on-dinosaur-bones-as-the-ultimate-status-symbol/
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