Texas Memorial Museum

Exhibits: Outdoor

Glen Rose Dinosaur Tracks

Famous around the world as the first and among the best sauropod tracks ever found, the Glen Rose Dinosaur Tracks at the Texas Memorial Museum are deteriorating.

“Years of constant exposure to moisture have taken their toll,” explained Director Ed Theriot. “The tracks need to be restored and moved.”

The slab is a type specimen used for comparison and to scientifically describe a particular kind of sauropod trackway. This slab also shows the tracks of a theropod.

“We have begun plans to restore and relocate the tracks,” said Theriot, “and are awaiting an estimate from an accredited stone conservation company to do the work.”

Restoration and relocation will entail labeling each piece of the trackways, moving the pieces, and reassembling them inside the Texas Memorial Museum’s first floor Hall of Geology and Paleontology.

A capital campaign to fund the project will begin once the trackways have been studied by the stone conservators.

Texas Natural Science Center’s dinosaur tracks, which are on display in a small building just north of the Texas Memorial Museum’s main entrance, were collected from the bed of Paluxy Creek about 5 miles northwest of Glen Rose, Texas. They are among the finest examples of dinosaur trackways ever discovered.

Two trackways can be seen. The broad footprints of the first trackway were made by the hind feet of a sauropod dinosaur that may have been 40-50 feet long, weighing 30 tons. The distance between prints indicates a stride of almost 10 feet. The deep, post-hole shaped holes were made by the front feet, which were not as broad as the rear feet. A second trackway of three-toed prints was made by a theropod dinosaur. The theropod, walking on hind legs with a stride of about 9 feet, was perhaps 30 feet in length. The absence of tail-drag marks indicates that both dinosaurs held their tails aloft. Some scientists think that the footprints actually document a battle between the theropod and the sauropod—for this reason, the Texas Natural Science Center’s dinosaur tracks have become internationally famous!

In 1939, Roland T. Bird of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) traveled to the Paluxy River site to collect sections of the trackway as part of a Work Projects Administration (WPA) project jointly supervised by The University of Texas at Austin and AMNH. The Center’s sections were hammered out of the parent trackway, numbered, transported by truck and train, and eventually reassembled at their destination.