When Water Stopped the Dinosaurs – #365papers – 2017 – 87

#365papers for March 28, 2017

Getty, Aucoin, Fox, Judge, Hardy, and Bush, 2017, Perennial lakes as an environmental contol on theropod movement in the Jurassic of the Hartford Basin: Geosciences, v. 7, doi:10.3390/geosciences7010013

What’s it about?

This is a paper about dinosaur tracks. Specifically, it discusses how dinosaur tracks, when they all seem to go in the same direction, are used as evidence that dinosaurs traveled in herds. Here, they show that the reason why the dinosaurs were all going the same way has to do with a lake near by, and not that the dinosaurs were all traveling together.

Why does it matter?

It’s natural to assume that organisms that are all traveling the same direction were traveling together. This implies important things about the behavior and lives of the dinosaurs. We don’t want to be wrong about this interpretation.

Why did I read this?

Dinosaur footprints sounded cool. Plus, I don’t know much about dinosaurs from the east side of North America.