Dinos Stalk New York - Not the Biggest Man on Campus, but Surely the Biggest Foot

[Patti <pkv1@erols.com>]

Dinos Stalk New York - Scientists discovered a rock embedded with dinosaur 
tracks more than 100 million years old during a renovation of Brooklyn 
College. Now, another stop on your next NYC tour! A superb addition to any 
Geology Dept., but I would doubt its "archeological" value so much as its 
paleontological value. - Patti

NEW YORK REGION   | August 20, 2005
Not the Biggest Man on Campus, but Surely the Biggest Foot

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/20/nyregion/20dinosaur.html?ex=1125201600&en=1fe3036e318a4991&ei=5070&emc=eta1

By Michael Brick
Published: August 20, 2005

Here is a good way to hide dinosaur tracks: Wait tens of millions of years 
while the footsteps fossilize under a shallow sea that will later become 
Texas, dig up the tracks just before World War II, put plaster around the 
sides, paint the whole thing a whimsical muddy red, take it to Brooklyn and 
bolt it to a classroom wall with an unadorned case.
(See photograph by Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

Wayne G. Powell, chairman of the geology department at Brooklyn College, 
with the track of an Acrocanthosaurus, top, and a larger one from a 
Pleurocoelus. Scientists thought the block was a replica.
By accident, this method worked until just this summer for Roland T. Bird, a 
Harley-riding excavator who called himself a dinosaur hunter. When Brooklyn 
College started renovating its lecture halls in May, scientists began 
packing what they had assumed was a case containing a plaster cast of 
dinosaur tracks, a teaching tool held in such regard that it was often 
obscured by a projector screen.

Removing the case, they found that the block on the wall of Room 3123, so 
phony-looking it could be mistaken for something carbon-frozen in "The 
Empire Strikes Back," was a real rock embedded with tracks more than 100 
million years old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and holding 
immense archaeological value.
"It was there all the time," said Wayne G. Powell, the chairman of the 
geology department, who was among the scientists removing the block from the 
wall. "It really never occurred to us that it could possibly be real."

Up three flights of stairs, behind a wooden door marked Geology Lecture 
Room, with the words Please Lock the Door underneath, the rock is found. It 
stands 55 inches high and 32 inches across.

A worker was laying a coat of epoxy on the floor yesterday, and the room 
smelled like the makings of a headache. The college has enlisted the 
American Museum of Natural History for help in removing the rock to clean it 
and put it back on display, but there are other considerations. Classes 
start in two weeks.

Considering what it has already been through, though, the rock can be called 
a survivor. No marker described its provenance, and those who knew what it 
was had died or moved on over the years. It also was able to hide in plain 
sight for decades largely because of changes in curatorial sensibilities The 
scientists who installed it in the 1940's would never have thought to tell 
anyone it was real; that would be like telling people your hair is real.
Their latter-day counterparts would never imagine treating a rare fossil so 
cavalierly as to, for starters, paint it.
Mr. Powell, who describes his specialty as "not dinosaurs," removed the 
rock's case at the close of the spring semester with a paleontology 
professor, John Chamberlain, and a student, Matt Garb. Because real dinosaur 
tracks are hard to come by, colleges and museums routinely display replicas, 
and the rock looked like one, partly because plaster was visible on its 
side.

Behind the case, though, written in pencil on the wall, they found the name 
R. T. Bird and the date, presumably of its installation, of May 16, 1942. 
Mr. Garb recognized the name, and the men got a copy of Mr. Bird's memoir, 
"Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter."
In the book, Mr. Bird, who dropped out of junior high school and worked as a 
cowboy before barnstorming the country on his motorcycle showing 
archaeological finds for the American Museum of Natural History, described 
discoveries in the limestone around the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Tex. 
The trackways there, now famous as the site where some creationists claim 
human footprints were laid contemporaneously with dinosaur tracks, have been 
preserved as Dinosaur Valley State Park, so fossils can no longer be 
removed.

But back in the late 1930's and early 1940's, Mr. Bird was making up his own 
rules. In his memoir, he described the way he and Erich Schlaikjer, an 
assistant professor of geology from Brooklyn College, distributed the blocks 
of tracks. He wrote: "Erich came up with a proposal. 'And I'd like one of 
the smaller ones for Brooklyn College.' "
Mr. Schlaikjer got his wish, bolted to the wall of the lecture hall and 
painted the same reddish-brown color bones that usually appear in history 
museums.
"They probably wanted tracks to match the bones," Mr. Powell said.
Kathleen Kovach, a facilities worker at the college, said, "That's more 
decorating than curating."

There are two tracks in the rock, a shallow one a couple of feet across and 
a deeper, narrower one the shape of a crescent. Based on the kinds of tracks 
common to the Paluxy River bed, the scientists at Brooklyn College said the 
big one was probably made by a Pleurocoelus, a 20-ton herbivore that has 
been named the Texas state dinosaur. The smaller one may have come from an 
Acrocanthosaurus, a sharp-toothed monster Pleurocoeluses sought to avoid 
meeting in dark cretaceous alleys.

Mr. Bird would have his own ideas about the tracks' origins, and would know 
why they had painted the rock, bolted it to the wall and lined it with 
plaster. But he died a long time ago, and left only scattered hints of the 
way he had lived.

Patti Kane-Vanni
pkv1@erols.com or paleopatti@hotmail.com
http://groups.msn.com/DinosaurandFossilDigs

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people 
always do that, but really great ones make you feel that you too, can become 
great." - Mark Twain