KATE GOLDEN\Frontiersman reporter
MAT-SU -- A three-toed, meat-eating, true-born Alaskan walked in some mud in what was to become Denali National Park in about 70 million years.
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"It's not necessarily the track itself that's so significant," said Tony Fiorillo, a dinosaur researcher. "It's where it is that's got us so excited."
Fiorillo and others have documented that Cretaceous-period dinosaurs, both carnivores and herbivores, duckbilled or armored, tracked through the coastal areas of the North Slope. But this is the first track seen in the Interior.
Fiorillo booked a flight as soon as he heard.
"If I could get out and push this plane any faster, I would," he said.
The find
Tomsich and Jeremiah Drewel, both University of Alaska Fairbanks students, were mapping the Cantwell and Teklanika geologic formations at a two-week field camp in the park. They walked along the Denali Park Road with Paul McCarthy, associate professor of geology at UAF, who was showing them some sedimentary rock. Bulges of sandstone stuck into the shale in the small outcrops along the road.
He was sure, he said, there must be dinosaur tracks in here somewhere.
Drewel, leaning against the rock, was skeptical until Tomsich spoke.
"Like this one?" Tomsich asked, pointing to a 6-by-9-inch track.
McCarthy gave a little howl. Now he could die, he joked later to his students.
This track was on a fairly high-traffic area of the park road. Why didn't anyone else see it before?
"You had to be on your knees to find it," Tomsich said. "You had to know what you were looking for."
The dinosaur
The carnivore who left his birdlike left print so nicely preserved was a modest-sized therapod, according to Fiorillo.
"It's a normal footprint, so the animal's probably just taking a lovely little walk in the woods," he said.
Think, he said, of the better-known Tyrannosaurus rex, scaled down. It walked on two legs, sort of resembling an ostrich but boasting a long tail. It was probably three to four meters long. It is similar to some that have been found in the Colville River deposit on the North Slope, where Fiorillo and McCarthy have worked.
The find is especially encouraging because it is that of a predator, Fiorillo said. Predators, at the top of the ecological pyramid, had to feed on creatures whose tracks may also be buried. On the Colville, therapods scavenged or killed duckbill dinosaurs.
The therapod experienced the same dark winter Alaska creatures do today, but "a warmer dark winter," McCarthy said.
The mean annual temperature was something between Portland's and Calgary's, said park geologist Phil Brease. The pollen record speaks of a lush understory with more angiosperms, or flowering plants. The area was wet, braided with an alluvial fan. The Alaska Range mountains were lifting, but they were certainly high, Brease said. There may have been a little less glaciation and snow coverage.
"We're just starting to get a sense as to what it is," McCarthy said of the environment.
What's next
The nearby Igloo Campground is already closed because of wolf activity, said superintendent Hooge. But the area will remain closed until officials decide how to best preserve the track, he said. It may appear as part of a science display in the Denali Center.
"This is the first-ever geological closure in the park," he said.
As for the researchers, they're still putting plans together for more searches. The National Park Service has partnered with the Dallas Museum of Natural History and the University of Alaska Fairbanks department of geology and geophysics for more investigations, a park release stated.
On the smallest scale, they're going to look for another footprint from the same animal. With another print in the same area, they could calculate the stride length and, indirectly, the height and weight of the animal.
Fiorillo said they've barely scratched the surface of Alaska's potential: "This great paleontological candy store," he called it.
Contact Kate Golden at 352-2284 or kate.golden@frontiersman.com.
Comments
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