History of "Joanna's Tracks" 
Glen Rose, Texas

These new and important dinosaur tracks were discovered by myself (Lance Hall) and Roz Morgan on Friday October 30, 2009 while visiting Glen Rose's annual "Fossilmania" Event.  We are both members of the Dallas Paleontological Society.  I am also the webmaster for NorthTexasFossils.com a non-commercial project that documents visually some of our North Texas paleontology and geology.  

We didn't stay very long at the Fossilmania event this year because we wanted to explore around Glen Rose for common fossils.  We decided to check out a well eroded "drainage ditch" nestled between two commercial properties (Comfort Inn Suites and a large unmarked unfenced lot next to it) and decided to take a peek.  We were basically looking for common fossils washing down the ditch.  The ditch may have originally been an excavation for a utility line but had been recently widened greatly through erosion.  Instead of common fossils we found a dinosaur track!

Click Here for a photograph of the locality taken Sept. 26, 2008 BEFORE most of the dirt covering the tracks was washed away.  The tracks are located right below the wall in the picture.   This photograph was taken through my vehicle window while on delivery.

At the time of our discovery only one clearly defined footprint was visible but I questioned it's authenticity given the tourist aspect and location behind a new Hotel.  The other tracks were still obscured by dirt.  While I can not claim we were the first to see this footprint (probably not) I do know that we discovered them very early after their exposure.  

Three years earlier in October 2006 the owner of the property (Larry Smith) let people from the Dallas Paleontological Society all over this property with no concern for what they were prospecting for so I do not feel we did anything wrong by looking in a drainage ditch on literally the southwestern border line of this property which was a pending commercial development trying to attract lookers. 

Because of dire personal events at home I was not able to return to Glen Rose until months later in mid January 2010.
On January 13, 2010 the Dallas Paleontological Society was having a presentation about dinosaurs.  This may sound like the average topic but  paleontology involves all creatures great and small as well as other fields like geology and various scientific methodologies.   This meeting spurred me to revisit the one track we had left behind in Glen Rose and get digital photographs.   When I arrived in Glen Rose at the ditch I found the amazing dinosaur trackway show below.  Here are more pictures from Jan. 13, 2010 and Roger Fry's documentation on Jan. 24, 2010.  (I put water in the footprints to make them more visible).  The hammer in the photographs is solely for scale, not excavation.

While I am hardly an expert on dinosaurs I realized there were two separate "theropod" dinosaur tracks (headed southwest) and possibly some "sauropod" tracks.  Here is an excellent illustration that shows what this time period (c. 100-113 million years ago) in Glen Rose looked like and the possible dinosaurs involved.  These tracks were created in a massive tidal flats region which encompassed much of the Glen Rose area at this time.  The Paluxy River tracks were also created in a tidal flats area.   
Between January 13 and 15, 2010 I began alerting many of our local paleontologists and others about this new dinosaur trackway.  The local newspaper was excluded at this time so as to prevent it getting too public and risk damage or theft of the individual tracks before real paleontologists could look at them.  My attempt here was to front load all this with legitimate Paleontologists FIRST (not with self-aggrandizing newspaper stories).  I was hoping one of our local people would want to follow up on these tracks so they could contact the land owner and make a professional-based appeal to have them studied and not buried under any pending commercial development.  Here is a list of persons contacted: (updated March 5, 2011)
  • Dr. Louis Jacobs, Paleontologist at S.M.U.  He is an internationally known and has written extensively about Texas paleontology in scientific literature and books.  He received by email all my photographs and the exact location.

  • Mike Polcyn, S.M.U. who works with Jacobs and Dale Winkler.  He received the joint email with Jacobs and responded to it as well.

  • Frank Holterhoff, President of the Dallas Paleontological Society.  He received by email all my photographs and the location.  This new trackway was announced at the meeting as well, witnessed by possibly 30-40 members of the Society.   Me (Lance Hall), Roz Morgan, and Roger Fry are all members of the Society.

  • Bill Huckaby of The Glen Rose Visitor's Bureau.  He received by email my photographs and expressed interest in using some of them on their website.  This is an important contact because it is essentually a branch of the local government.

  • Derek Main, U.T.A. paleontology teacher.  He is the research paleontologist of the ongoing Arlington Archosaur Site dig.  He expressed interest in visiting the site.

  • Roger Fry.  He is the Arlington Archosaur Site dig crew chief.  He has had much previous experience documenting and excavating dinosaur track ways in Glen Rose, Texas and other counties.   He is also a member of the Dallas Paleontological Society.  He expressed interest in visiting the tracks and did so on January 24, 2010 to begin preliminary documentation.

  • The Comfort Inn Suites Hotel at the track site.  The day I photographed them I told the young woman at the front desk about the dinosaur tracks behind their Hotel.  (I recently learned that the owner Nick Patel knew about the tracks early on before they were later "re-discovered" 10 months later.  Whether he knew about them because I told the clerk that day or it was someone else around the same time I don't know.)     

  • The tracks were also documented on the popular internet discussion forum TheFossilForum.com.  Click Here for the specific thread about the tracks.
      
  • The tracks were posted to my Facebook page at the time.  Click Here for the photo album.

  • It later came to my attention that people at the Dallas Museum of Natural History became aware of these tracks via the people I contacted initially. I have not contacted Ron Tykoski or Tony Fiorillo about all this yet.

    In April and May 2010 I also reported to the following:

  • Jon Baskin, Paleontologist at Texas A&M University, Kingsville.  He has a website documenting Texas paleontology.  He graciously added many of my photographs to his own website, Click Here to see pics.   

  • Glen Kuban who documents the various Glen Rose dinosaur tracks on his website, Click Here.

  • Robert Cadwallader, reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram.  

  • In late May 2010 teachers from the Lingleville and Three-Way I.S.D. personally visited the tracks.  They learned of the tracks via Art Sahlstein the discoverer of the Arlington Archosaur Site.  I do not know if they held any school fieldtrips after that.  FaceBook photo album of the teachers fieldtrip.


    In early November 2010 I reported them to more people as a rebuttal to someone else's claims and MUCH later "re-discovery":. 

  • Kathryn Jones, Editor of the Glen Rose Reporter.   

  • Dr. James O. Farlow who has written extensively about Texas dinosaurs and tracks.  He stated to me that we would get credit for this discovery in the scientific literature. Whether that will be "original discovery" credit or "co-discovery" credit he did not specify.  We personally would prefer to only be referenced as "Members of the Dallas Paleontological Society" given that the first study and documentation of this new trackway was initiated by three of it's members in January 2010. 

  • The Somervell County Historical Society by mail. 

  • Dr. Phillip A Murry, Tarlton State University, Stephenville, Texas.

  • Aaron Pan, Fort Worth Museum of Science & History.
This is the TRUE history of these important new dinosaur tracks!  They were discovered in late 2009 and then documented and reported extensively in January 2010.

Here are some rather pointed blog posts about this discovery and the "other guy":