Dino tracks offer clues about ancient life

A new exhibit titled “The Lost Tracks: A Journey of Discovery,” which opened Saturday at the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum, showcases the work of renowned dinosaur fossil photographer Andre Delgalvis.
Delgalvis started doing commercial photography in 1970 and began photographing the landscape of the Lake Powell area in the early 1990s, when he and his wife got a houseboat. It wasn’t until the early 2000s when a drought started to hit the Southwestern United States could the fossils be seen.
“In 2003, it dropped to the lowest level I’ve seen,” Delgalvis said of Lake Powell and the effect of the drought. Delgalvis and his wife were testing out new canoes in the lake when, thanks to the drought, he was able to capture his first photograph of a dinosaur fossil. He saw some odd indentations in the rock and said to himself, “I couldn’t believe it this might be dinosaur tracks…It occurred to me that no one ever saw these before,” Delgalvis said.
The fossils he found were special for numerous reasons, one of which is because they were in a pack and second was because they are classified as crouching fossils. “This crouching thing is a very big deal,” Delgalvis said. According to Museum Director Kenneth Carpenter, dinosaurs walked on their toes, but when they squatted the tracks left impressions of their heels. The crouching fossil was only the second found in the West and sixth found in the world.
The first set of tracks that Delgalvis found were his most interesting because of where they were located and that they were all in a pack. There was also a pair of footprints that were going in the opposite direction of the group which stood out. Delgalvis said it almost looked like something caught the dinosaur’s attention and caused it to stop, but a paleontologist later determined that was not the case. It is hard to determine the type of dinosaur the fossil is from because there are rarely any bones associated with the fossils so they are named by the tracks.
Another factor contributing to the success of the fossil hunting is the mindset of the person going out. “When you go out you don’t want to have a preconceived notion,” Delgalvis said. He elaborated by saying that sometimes what you think a fossil may look like could be something completely different.
Delgalvis has also had a book titled “The Lost Tracks: A Journey of Discovery.” His work has also been aired on a PBS documentary, “Under Arizona.” The exhibit will be on display through May 27.