Poison Spider Paleontology

The Poison Spider Dinosaur Tracksite preserves tracks of small to large theropod dinosaurs, offering a glimpse into the past and helping paleontologists estimate an animal's approximate size, speed, direction of travel, and aspects of daily life that bones alone cannot reveal. The track slabs fell from Jurassic Navajo Sandstone cliffs that rest on the brick red slopes of the Kayenta Formation, where massive sand dune deposits, interdune lake deposits, and stream channels record a desert landscape. A variety of dinosaur footprints appear on fallen blocks from the lower section and top of the cliff, and the smooth Navajo Sandstone cliff faces also provided surfaces for Native Americans to create petroglyphs. These fossilized vertebrate footprints, along with bones and teeth on public lands, are protected by law, and removing, molding, casting, tracing, carving, collecting, defacing, or altering them is illegal without a scientific research permit under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009.

Utah · United States