The Port Aransas Beach Bums

The summer of 2000 The Beach Bum and colleagues had a chance to meet some of the discoverers of one of the largest known sites of Middle Jurassic dinosaur tracks.  We talked about that almost three years ago and feel it's time to repeat it here.

The Beach Bums thank Cliff Manuel (on the left) for the "heads up" on the updated web site for the discovery.  Erik Kvale (right) is the geologist who realized just what they were looking at.

Ancient nature lovers (or should that be lovers of ancient nature?)[or both?]
posing near the Red Gulch Dinosaur Track Site that they helped to discover.

Some press and Literature references:

The Beach Bums page linking to the definitive paper in PALAIOS by:
Kvale, Johnson, Mickelson, Keller, Furer and Archer

< A press release from Indiana University received 15 Nov 00 >
< And another from Dartmouth University received 22 Nov 00 >

		Hard to see? Pass the mouse cursor over the image.
This is what all the fun was about. Sorry about the little bit of modern, pink chalk dust marking the location. That will soon blow or wash away but some of the other things that have happened will last another 167 million years!

We feel that The U.S.Bureau of Land Management deserves kudos for their Wyoming web-site and for their field efforts in Wyoming for keeping alive the mystique of "Jurassic Park."

To the Beach Bums inexperienced eye this image, which BLM has chosen for a logo. appears to have one track superimposed on another.  It also appears to have an impression of a relatively large cubic crystal (halite ?) smack in the middle.  What's going on here?

Click on the "theropod" track above to learn more about this interesting, recent addition to the paleontology of the Western United States. Information about the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite was called to our attention by our Arkansas friends from Stevens Creek who are somehow loosely related to the track discoverers. -- Thanks.

On the other hand - we often can't trust the uninformed! Many problems can happen when there is too little proper management of our public assets. Let's try to keep things for the future to enjoy.

The site is near Shell,WY and is in the center of all sorts of other areas of excitement for the outdoors-type of person. Valuable links to the area are: