Utah Officials Drove Over Important Fossil Site With a Backhoe, Paleontologists Say

Paleontologists and locals acquainted with a fossil website in Moab, Utah declare {that a} backhoe drove over dinosaur footprints and different animal trackways, damaging or destroying them. The Utah Bureau of Land Management, which is liable for defending Mill Canyon Track Site, has stated that its current dismantling of a picket boardwalk there induced no injury to fossils.

According to sources who spoke to Gizmodo, the early Cretaceous Period fossils at Mill Canyon are delicate and sometimes not obvious to the bare eye, which might make it simple for somebody to break them unintentionally. A picket boardwalk, now dismantled, was constructed on the website forward of its public opening in 2016, to permit guests to view the fossils with out stepping on them. An October 2021 proposal from the Bureau of Land Management’s Moab Field Office claimed that “the wooden boardwalk is warping and presents a serious trip hazard” and that a brand new boardwalk can be required.

“If I see that somebody has put a human print in the mud off the boardwalk, I get frantic,” Sue Sternberg, a Mill Canyon Track Site volunteer steward since 2013, informed Gizmodo by telephone. “So just the thought of this heavy machinery driving over the track area is so horrifying for those of us who know how fragile everything is there.”

Paleoartist Brian Engh, employed by former Utah Bureau of Land Management paleontologist Rebecca Hunt-Foster to do the art work for the signage alongside the boardwalk, emphasised the significance of this website. Among the varied footprints, there are “even croc belly slides and resting traces,” Engh informed Gizmodo in an electronic mail.

“There is a running dromaeosaur,” he added, “a turtle tromping through the mud, a sauropod slipping on the shoreline, and even a spot where a sauropod stepped right into the middle of the largest theropod track on the site, indicating that the shoreline records a relatively short period of time as the lakeshore was exposed by a dropping water line.”

In a press release this week, the Utah BLM stated it’s “committed to balancing resource protection and public access to the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite, and other public lands managed by the Moab Field Office, which continue to receive high visitation. The Moab Field Office is working to improve safe public access with an updated boardwalk that is designed to protect the natural resources of this site. During that effort, heavy equipment is on location, but it is absolutely not used in the protected area.”

Last week, Utah resident and funding banker Jeremy Roberts was trying on-line for current paleontological information. The topic is a ardour of his 14-year-old son, who was instrumental in proposing the primary official Utah state dinosaur and is concerned within the Utahraptor State Park to be opened in 2023. Roberts was puzzled to see a discover on the BLM web site proposing the set up of a brand new boardwalk framing Mill Canyon Track Site.

The present boardwalk, constructed with steering from paleontologists, was manufactured from wooden. This proposal supposed to exchange wooden with metal and concrete, a design that Roberts’ son instantly acknowledged can be too heavy for the delicate atmosphere of the tracks and the realm round them. So Roberts contacted the BLM the following day. When they didn’t reply, he stated he reached out to paleontologists acquainted with Mill Canyon. They tried to contact the BLM and, he stated, didn’t get a response both. This prompted him to exit to go to the location. At that point, he stated, he didn’t assume any building had begun, however when he arrived, he noticed that the boardwalk had already been taken aside and that tire imprints had broken a number of fossil trackways.

Last weekend, he and others started tweeting footage of the location and what they describe as injury brought on by a backhoe, in addition to placement of dismantled boardwalk sections on top of tracks.

The Center for Biological Diversity has despatched a cease-and-desist letter to the BLM, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has issued two formal letters requesting additional details about the reported injury and the way the BLM will guarantee the location’s preservation. As of Monday, January 31, the BLM has paused building work on the brand new boardwalk.

An announcement this week from the Utah BLM stated: “Before further construction takes place at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite, a BLM regional paleontologist will be onsite conducting a resource assessment working with Utah’s state paleontologist. When construction resumes, we will ensure exposed trackways near the walkway construction will be marked and flagged for avoidance, per the environmental assessment and associated decision. At this time, we have no evidence of any damage in the interpreted area, but out of an abundance of caution, a team will be dispatched to assess.”

Fossil tracks have been found at Mill Canyon in 2009, with the primary excavations beginning in 2013. It’s in a distant space. Getting to the location from the parking space is a few quarter-mile hike, in line with Sternberg, a volunteer who was a part of the Utah Friends of Paleontology, one of many a number of teams that helped deliver this website to fruition.

Martin Lockley is researcher who has labored extensively on the Mill Canyon website. As an ichnologist, he research hint fossils, which means preserved data of animal actions corresponding to footprints and burrows. He and his colleagues wrote three papers on the site and its fossils. He stated of the BLM and the current controversy in a telephone interview: “I didn’t find out until after the work began that they posted some kind of public statement about the intent to do this work on their website, but if you look at the final document, they don’t even give the address of the website. And they also say that they received no response. Well, they received no response because nobody knew it had been posted. And that includes all of the persons that worked on the project, including some of the BLM. We had three or four BLM people as co-authors on our paper. One of them is still with the BLM, and they didn’t notify me that this work was taking place, but I think it’s because they didn’t know themselves.”

Rachel Wootton, a public affairs specialist for the Moab and Monticello area of the BLM Utah, stated by telephone that Brent Breithaupt, a paleontologist with the BLM, and state paleontologist Jim Kirkland are at present reviewing the location. She stated that the BLM is working with them and will probably be utilizing their suggestions in any future website enhancements. She maintains that the aforementioned proposal was listed on the BLM web site in October.

Lockley claimed that, whereas a whole lot of skilled paleontologists are involved with current occasions, “some are not allowed to speak publicly.” Gizmodo tried to interview two different paleontologists who’ve labored on the location, each of whom declined to remark.

Lee Shenton, president-elect of the native chapter in Moab of the Utah Friends of Paleontology, stated in an electronic mail {that a} doubtless “contributing factor” to the incident is the dearth of a BLM district paleontologist. The earlier particular person in that position, Rebecca Hunt-Foster, moved to a different alternative years in the past to work at Dinosaur National Monument and has but to get replaced.

Local volunteer Sternberg stated she rushed to the location final week as quickly as she heard one thing was taking place. She defined that it might be simple to drive over tracks by mistake, as a result of they are often onerous to establish. “I could see someone doing that accidentally,” she stated. “Some of the track layer is still buried under dirt, and some of the track layer is exposed. Here and there, you’ll see two tracks or one track or a crocodile tail swipe, and that’s the part that the guy or the woman drove over. And again, I’m sure the person who drove is horrified and has no idea. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it will just look like green rock, I guess.”

Anthony Martin, an ichnologist and professor of observe at Emory University, emphasised the location’s significance to researchers. “I can say that these sorts of tracksites always require much caution, because they are easily damaged,” he stated by telephone. “And as a public resource funded by taxpayer money, we should especially put more effort into making sure they’re protected in perpetuity.”

He has taught his college students about Mill Canyon Tracksite. “As both a scientist and an educator, these sorts of sites are extremely important for sharing research with the public in a place where the public can actually visit it,” he stated. “That’s so much different than, say, science that’s done in a research lab where nobody gets to see it except for the people in that lab. Hence, we have to put more effort into ensuring that these sorts of educational resources are available for all to enjoy.”

Both Lockley and Sternberg described their earlier experiences with the BLM as being very optimistic, noting that the BLM has been an energetic companion in ensuring this website and others are open to the general public and preserved. “Usually, we’re just afraid of the public being vandals. That’s who you always think you’re protecting these sites from,” Sternberg stated. “Just to find out that it’s a bumbling mishap by the BLM is just disappointing and frightening. We need a paleontologist here.”

“Forty years ago, people didn’t take dinosaur tracks very seriously,” Lockley added, “and I’ve been working in the Moab area for 40 years. It’s only in the last 10 years that the BLM and the Forest Service, with the help of the paleontological community—people like myself who’ve done the research in the trenches, so to speak—that they have developed these interpretive destinations for the public. And this implies that they recognize that tracks are important and that they’re something that people can see in the field.”