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Footprints on the Sands of Time

By Fred Buss Department of Geology Brigham Young University.

Anyone who has wandered along the seaside and played or dreamed on the beach, has surely sometimes written his name in the sands and then watched the incoming waves wash out the record forever. To us the shifting sands of the shore are symbolical of all that is unstable and fleeting, and it seems especially unlikely that on them could be preserved any permanent record of any event that may have transpired there.

Yet the geologist knows full well that the record of past events in the earth's history is more permanently written on the muds and sands of the shore or delta flat than are human records on papyrus or sheepskin, and the interpretation of the shore line hieroglyphics is about as certain as those on the monuments of Egypt or Assyria.

Four miles east of Heber City, Utah, at the mouth of Lake Creek Canyon, is a quarry of red sandstone, now practically abandoned because of the competition of the cement window sill and paving block. The soft, red rock of this quarry evidently represents the debris of a land mass brought hither by some ancient stream or washed by the ocean waves from some sea cliff and then deposited in some sheltered cove of a long vanished Triassic or Jurassic sea.

The sandstone of this quarry is crossed and recrossed with innumerable footprints of various small bipedal creatures which walked or rather waddled across the sand flat, evidently in search of the bodies of sea animals which might have been left exposed by the retreating tide. Sometimes one can observe where these little creatures paused in their walk to dig for something buried a few inches beneath the surface in the soft sand.

The accompanying illustration shows the tracks preserved on two slabs of rock which were collected in this locality. The larger slab is about three and one-half feet by one foot, entirely crossed by the tracks of a little animal which could have been but little larger than a half-grown chicken.

The trail of the right foot is nearly two inches from the trail of the left, yet the distance between the steps is barely one and one-quarter inches. Evidently the creature's legs were very short and placed far apart and he must have had a very pronounced waddle as he progressed along the sandy flat. The straightness and regularity of his steps indicate a mind at peace with his surroundings and apparently solely intent on seeking what he might devour.

Animal tracks in red sandstone, found near Heber, Utah, by the Brigham Young University, Geological Department, October, 1921.