The dinosaur tracks at Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison constitute one of the most important paleontological sites in Colorado. Just this summer reports came out about studies of dinosaur mating rituals involving the tracks. The site also is an important tourist destination, drawing some quarter-million people each year, and an important educational site, inspiring thousands of children each year to learn more science.
So, of course, the government bureaucrats charged with managing the site sit idly by while weather and weeds slowly destroy the tracks. If current trends continue, the tracks will be largely gone within a matter of decades. Unless the relevant politicians and bureaucrats get up off their butts and do something to fix the problem.
The answer may be stated simply: Build a protective structure over the main tracks. Yes, I understand “it’s not as simple as that,” but, in the end, yes, it is that simple.
Tracks in trouble
As my regular readers well know, I am usually not one to look for government solutions to problems. But, in this case, Jefferson County owns the land of Dinosaur Ridge, and, practically, that’s not changing in the foreseeable future. So the officials of Jefferson County, in interaction with state bureaucrats, are the main people who need to fix the problem. Let’s hope the governor and state legislature give them a much-needed kick in the pants!
Last year, Paolo Zialcita wrote an article about the problem for CPR. Jeff Lamontagne, executive director of Friends of Dinosaur Ridge, the organization tasked with managing the site, told CPR, “We are losing dinosaur tracks here almost every year, and by our estimates more than an average of one per year. It’s not just a little bit of qualitative degradation over time, we have different forces here that lead to the actual loss . . . of some of these dinosaur tracks that you can see.”
Zialcita writes, “Dinosaur fossils in museums are often protected by glass enclosures with temperature and humidity controls. But Dinosaur Ridge is an uncovered rock constantly exposed to Colorado’s elements. Amy Atwater, director of development and membership at Friends of Dinosaur Ridge, said that is among the main causes of track degradation and loss.” So Dinosaur Ridge needs a protective structure!
Atwater, now director of paleontology for Friends of Dinosaur Ridge, told CPR that “underwater seepage” and ice also help destroy the tracks.
Zialcita also reports that an existing water diversion wall “is starting to deteriorate.” Unless Jefferson County has a time machine in the basement somewhere such that they can bring forward some dinosaurs to lay down some new tracks, maybe officials should work on protecting the irreplaceable tracks we now have.
Zialcita reports, “All of Dinosaur Ridge’s stakeholders agree—the historic site is in need of some sort of protection. But there isn’t a general consensus among them on how to best proceed. Lamontagne and Friends of Dinosaur Ridge argue there needs to be some kind of cover that shields the tracksite from the elements.”
In other words, there is consensus for how to protect the main tracks: build a protective structure. But the relevant political actors are too mired in indecision and hand-wringing to actually execute the only plan that can work.
Dithering bureaucrats
Here is a key paragraph from Zialcita’s report: “Emails and letters obtained by CPR News show that Friends of Dinosaur Ridge wanted to kickstart a fundraising campaign in 2022 to raise money for such a cover. However, that was met with pushback from several stakeholders, including Jefferson County Open Spaces, the Colorado State Historical Preservation Office, and the Jefferson County Historical Commission.”
The open space director, who, notably, is not an expert in paleontology, offered some cockamamie excuse that a protective cover might not work perfectly and might even introduce unforeseen problems. Okay, but this sort of thing has been done before. My son and I enjoyed the elaborate protective structure around the “wall of bones” on the Utah side of Dinosaur National Monument. Protective action might not work as well as we hope, says JeffCo, ignoring the fact that we know for certain that inaction will lead to degradation of the fossil tracks. This is analogous to a doctor refusing to offer a life-saving heart stent on the grounds that the entry point might become infected.
Nobody doubts that you need people who know what they are doing, you need careful plans, you need careful execution, you need continual monitoring to ensure the solution is working as intended. But the difficulty of the solution should not stop it from being implemented. A well-conceived solution beats lame excuses.
I contacted Jefferson County Parks and Open Space to check about possible updates. Here is what a representative told me about a protective structure: “Thanks for your inquiry. We will not move forward with that idea until we have met the requirements of the State Historic Preservation Office, one of which is to develop a Preservation Plan for the entirety of Dinosaur Ridge. This plan will provide further guidance on that topic and develop wholistic preservation priorities for the resources. We are at the very beginning of that planning effort and expect it to take 12-18 months to complete.”
This is bureaucratic dithering and passing the buck. The term “entirety” here is an obvious excuse to fail to protect the main wall of tracks, the most important feature of Dinosaur Ridge and what is being rapidly lost while bureaucrats sit on their hands.
The Preservation Office deals mainly with “architectural and archaeological” preservation. The dinosaur tracks are a paleontological site. Dawn DiPrince, president and CEO of History Colorado, “was named Colorado’s State Historic Preservation Officer by Governor Jared Polis,” notes History Colorado. DiPrince, who studied English at CSU Pueblo and “Women’s Studies” at Texas Women’s University, has zero relevant credentials or expertise in preserving paleontological sites.
Friends of Dinosaur Ridge points to a 2022 Tedx talk (published in 2023) by Martin Lockley, who spent his career studying dinosaur trackways. (Tragically, Lockley died of cancer toward the end of 2023.) Lockley said, “It’s very important that these landscapes, these ancient landscapes, are preserved, because they are actual Jurassic parks. They are places where dinosaurs, and extinct animals, lived and loved and fought for survival. Just as we protect sites like Stonehenge or Pompei or the Grand Canyon, we need to protect these sights for the future. This is what we call our geo-heritage. It is earth’s memory. And it is vitally important that we preserve it for the next seven generations of seven-year-old dinosaur trackers.”
According to this year’s results from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success tests, only 39% of fifth graders, 36.4% of eighth graders, and 25% of eleventh graders met or exceeded expectations in science. Maybe if our political leaders took our scientific heritage a little more seriously, our children would follow.
Not only Jefferson County’s bureaucrats, but its county commissioners, who ultimately decide who to hire and who to replace, have a moral responsibility to see this through. So do the relevant state-level bureaucrats, the governor, and the legislature.
Protect these tracks. Failure to do so constitutes a moral crime against Colorado’s scientific heritage.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
