There’s just something about dinosaurs that brings out the kid in me. You, too, I’m guessing. As luck would have it, the Connecticut River valley was absolutely crawling with dinosaurs during the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods starting around 200 million years ago. This region was home to shallow seas and lakes, and the shorelines offered an ideal spot for these animals to leave their footprints in the mud.

In the 1960s, work was being done on the site to prepare it for a new state office building, and a bulldozer operator noticed a set of prints. This isn’t unusual per se, the region is known for dinosaur tracks, but further investigation revealed a very large trackway that had been exceptionally preserved. The site was quickly converted into a museum and visitor center, with a large dome covering about 500 tracks, which are left in place. There are an additional 1500 or so tracks outside the dome that have been covered with earth to preserve them. Markers indicate their location.

In another lucky turn, this area was also rich in silicates like mica, specifically phyllosilicates. Phyllon is a Greek word meaning ‘leaf’, and micas such as biotite form in very thin, two-dimensional sheets, like paper. When a dinosaur stepped into this muddy silicate mix, the mica conformed to the shape of the foot, both preserving detail and creating a layer that allows us in modern times to peel the rock apart in sheets, revealing the tracks. One of the most fascinating exhibits at the park is a large print that has been sectioned horizontally, so you can see what the print looks like at various depths, including both the negative print, where the animal stepped, and also positive prints where material filled in, and ‘underneath’ prints where you are seeing the footprint from the underside.

The museum is divided into two sections, the first an explanation of what is here, including fossils recovered from the site and nearby, and a wall where the ground has been cross-sectioned to show the depth at which such things are found, and also the rock composition of each layer. The tracks are mainly in sandstone and mudstone. It’s highly interactive and of course great for kids, but the material is presented in an ‘adult’ tone for the most part, which I appreciated.

The second section is dedicated to the tracks, and an elevated walkway lets you explore a bit. Dioramas on the wall show the kinds of animals that made the tracks as well as the sort of plants you’d find in this time period. I gasped out loud when I turned the corner and saw the prints for the first time.

It’s really interesting to see the actual lines of individual animals as they walked across the mud flat. Buttons on the railing let visitors select an individual and light up the tracks that it made across the room. The larger animals left tracks that are classified as Eubrontes, meaning they are largish and have three toes, and were made by a bipedal creature similar to T. Rex. The size and stride, about four feet, of the Eubrontes tracks suggest they were made by a large, meat-eating dinosaur, likely a kind of Dilophosaurus, which lived in the American southwest around the same time. The environment in the Connecticut River valley and its basins like the Hartford Basin, where the tracks sit, just wasn’t good for preserving bones, so really it is just a guess based on evidence from other sites with similar tracks.

At some point I remembered that I was here on a POTA rove, part of a two-day run through Connecticut that included US-1662 Devil’s Hopyard and US-1726 Wadsworth Falls State Park. There’s a lovely picnic area behind the dome that has plenty of picnic tables, and even though it was February I brushed off the snow and set the rig up. The gear for this trip included an IC-705 and a Gabil 7350T vertical, and it took about 20 minutes to log 20 contacts, all on 20m, which I think has a nice symmetry to it.

The picnic area offers a path that leads along a boardwalk into a swamp, but not just any swamp! Here the plants have been chosen to refer to species that would have flourished during the Jurassic, so conifers and ginkgoes and plenty of ferns. You’ll also find plenty of Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, which first appeared in the Cretaceous but during the Jurassic was widespread across what is now North America. Today you’ll find them on the east coast, and their cousins the Giant Sequoia are on the west coast. Not that long ago a healthy stand was discovered in China. These trees are true rarities, having survived hundreds of millions of years with very little genetic change. In fact, scientists had already studied fossilized specimens before it was realized that there were living specimens.

Dinosaur Park is a lot of fun, no matter what your age is. There’s a large parking area if you want to set up from your car, and both the picnic area and an adjoining field are great spots, too. Kids are especially going to like this place, but honestly who doesn’t love hanging out with dinosaurs?