"Dino Dance Floor": Cut the Music Please
But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A team from the authors' institution, the University of Utah, made a trip to the site on 30 October. When they came back, the head of the geology department announced, "There simply are no tracks or real track-like features at this site."
A larger team of researchers will be looking at the site more closely. Perhaps the truth lies between—it's a mix of ancient tracks and modern erosional potholes. But perhaps not. Maybe something more human happened: a grad student's brainstorm, a brilliant idea based on ambiguous evidence, seducing his advisor's mind. This is known to happen, but rarely on such a large stage. Rest assured that no one is likely to lose his or her job over this—science in truth is a risky business, not the cut-and-dried, monotone enterprise many people assume. In its own way, science is as thrilling, and as humbling, as Olympic sports—and by advancing knowledge, everyone wins.
You can see for yourself in my tour of Dinosaur Ridge National Natural Landmark, near Denver, and the Triceratops Trail near Golden, Colorado, that dinosaur tracks are not always clear and plain.
Comments
It seems clear that the reports of the tracks and trackways was ill-advised and a not uncommon error, but usually amongst amateurs or non-geologists. The erosional nature of the features is rather apparent even in photographs and is duplicated in many other places. This is an episode best forgotten, although one must wonder what the graduate student and advisor will do now.
If you were peer-reviewing this paper, would you be so sure that it was “rather obvious”? This is a locality you’ve never seen, and the authors have made such careful drawings and graphs.
I’d like to know if they presented this anywhere first (usually scientists do), and what response they got at the time.
Having published papers on tracks and trackways, as well as having looked at sedimetological and erosional features, the “dance-floor” was more than “flawed” and seemed to be a “discovery” of exuberance and not substance. There are more “tracks” and “trackways” that are not, than there are that are. Such is the way of thesis projects.