Dinosaur Slipped 85 Million Years Ago

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7201, 26 April 1930, Page 3

Dinosaur Slipped 85 Million Years Ago

HISTORY FROM TRACKS NEW YORK, April 5. A man digging quietly iu his garden and a group of excavating researchers have alike just made contributions to historic geology with finds in New Jersey. Four large tracks of a bipedal dinosaur were uncovered in blue clay at Hampton Cutter works, near Woodbridge, while Werner Beck, a gardener, uncovered somewhat unexpectedly an eight-inch lower molar of a mastodon in his back yard in Union. In the excavating party were men from Rutgers, Yale, the State of New •Jersey Geology Department and the American Museum of Natural History, who have been excavating in the vicinity of their discovery since last January. Their find, iu point of years, must take precedence over that of the humble gardener, for the tracks are believed to be from tho Cretaceous ago and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 85,000,000 years old. Tho tooth, it was estimated, was only about 100,000 years old. It was brought to New York City to tho American Museum of Natural History for identification, while the tracks were carefully sawed out of tho surrounding clay and taken to Rutgers, where plaster casts will be made. Then one will be sent to tho State Department of Geology in Trenton and another brought to the American Museum of Natural History here.

They are about nine inches deep, and were so placed originally as to indicate, the scientists say, that their owner was going somewhere in a hurry with a nine-foot stride and lost his balance near the scene.