A little part of San Bernardino County is buried in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County â" on the second floor of the Dinosaur Hall, perched above the hovering skeletons of a seafaring plesiosaur.
Set into the floor, beneath a clear acrylic cover, is a slab of reassembled sandstone containing the only known dinosaur tracks found in California, and the oldest evidence of dinosaurs in the state. The tracks are estimated to be 170 million years old.
They were found in 1950 in the eastern Mojave by James Evans. He identified some of the impressions in the sandstone as the footprints left by small bipedal dinosaurs called coelurosaurs (sel-LUR-a-sores) and took photographs of the site. After that it was pretty much forgotten until the 1970s, when scientists at the San Bernardino County Museum visited the site.
Molds taken of the impressions in 2005 showed that a number of other animals had left their fossilized footprints in the rock as well.
Former San Bernardino County Museum Curator Bob Reynolds said at the time that rare pterosaur (winged dinosaurs) tracks had been detected, along with the prints of 11 other small animals.
Not long after, concerns were raised that souvenir fossil hunters were damaging the site.
In 2008, an excavation removed large portions of the track-laden sandstone. Some of the material is housed at the San Bernardino County Museum and will be incorporated into the long-delayed Hall of Geological Wonders. The rest is with the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.
Doug Goodreau is a paleontologist for the Los Angeles museum. He said the floor display of the dinosaur tracks represents about 20 percent of the material the museum has.
âWe have a lot more pallets of the stuff that we hope to get on exhibit,â Goodreau said. He would like to see a more extensive trail way added to whatâs already on display, he said, âbut itâs hard work.â
Just getting the rocks with the fossilized prints from the field to the museum took about three weeks, he said. But heâs glad to have been part of the effort.
âThis is the oldest known dinosaur evidence in California,â he said.
And, as far as land-dwelling dinosaurs, the state doesnât have a whole lot more. Fossilized remains of duck-billed dinosaurs from 65 million years ago have been found in Fresno. A tooth from one that was found in the Santa Ana Mountains is on display on the wall next to the tracks. But thereâs not much else.
And not much detail is known about the dinosaurs that left their muddy footprints behind in the Mojave. Goodreau said they were probably between the size of a turkey and an ostrich.
âThis is pre-T. rex,â he said.
Even with the impressive Tyrannosaurus rexes â" there are three of them â" on the ground floor, along with reconstructions of triceratops, stegosaurus and other great beasts, Goodreau said the footprints get a lot of attention.
Kids, he said, âlike to see how their footprints size up with the dinosaur. The more tactile you can make it, the richer the experience.â
He hopes they appreciate the uniqueness of what they are seeing.
âA lot of people donât know what we have in California,â he said. âBut when it comes to trackways, you donât see that everywhere. This will spur some interest in that.â
And when the Hall of Geological Wonders eventually opens its doors at the San Bernardino County Museum, you wonât have to go quite so far for the chance to walk in the footsteps of a once-local dinosaur.
Reach Mark Muckenfuss at 951-368-9595 or firstname.lastname@example.org