Dinosaur Highway: A History of Dinosaur Valley State Park

Notes

NOTES AND OTHER TRACKWAYS Chapter 1: The Changing Face of North Central Texas 1. Texas Department of Transportation, Official Travel Map, Austin, Texas, 1995; Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Dinosaur Tracks State Park, map prepared by Williams-Stackhouse and Associates, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Archeology Files, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Austin; United States Department of the Interior, Hill City Quadrangle, Texas, 7.5 minute series, 1961, photorevised 1979; United States Department of the Interior, Glen Rose West Quadrangle, Texas, 7.5 minute series, 1966, photorevised 1979; John Clements, Flying the Colors: Texas (Dallas: Clements Research, Inc., 1984), p. 402; Ron Tyler, editor-in-chief, The New Handbook of Texas (6 vols.; Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), Vol. 5, “Somervell County,” pp. 1144-1145; Texas Almanac, 1961-1962 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1961), p. 636; Texas Almanac, 2004-2005 (Dallas: The Dallas Morning News, 2004), p. 270; Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, 1972-1973 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corporation, 1971), p. 331. The New Handbook of Texas will hereafter be cited as NHOT. The total park acreage is based on 2008 figures. 2. Albert G. Fiedler, Artesian Water in Somervell County, Texas, United States Department of the Interior, Water-Supply Paper 660, Prepared in cooperation with the Texas State Board of Water Engineers and State Department of Health (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 6-7; Diane Dismukes Interview, July 27, 2004; Ken Fry Interview, July 30, 2004; NHOT, Vol. 3, “Grand Prairies and the Lampasas Cut Plain,” p. 278, Vol. 2, “Cross Timbers,” pp. 421-422; J. Stewart Nagle, Glen Rose Cycles and Facies, Paluxy River Valley, Somervell County, Texas (Austin: University of Texas, Bureau of Economic Geology, May 1968), p. 2.; John Graves, Hard Scrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 9-10; Billy Paul Baker, Park Superintendent, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Interview, July 27, 2004; James Farlow Interview, August 6, 2004; Robert T. Hill, Geography and Geology of the Black and Grand Prairies, Texas, United States Department of the Interior, Twenty-first Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, Part VII (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), pp. 473-475; Darwin Spearing, Roadside Geology of Texas (Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 242-244; R. Jay Parker, “The Geomorphic Evolution of the Glen Rose Prairie, North-Central Texas,” BS Thesis, Baylor University, Waco, August 1980, pp. i, 1-2. The subtitle of the Robert T. Hill report reads: ... with detailed descriptions of the Cretaceous formations and special reference to artesian waters. Geologically, the Glen Rose Formation is part of the Trinity Group, Comanchean Series. The Paluxy valley area of the park lies within a subdivision of the Lampasas Cut Plain called the Glen Rose Prairie. 3. Graves, p. 10. 4. Baker Interview; Farlow Interview; Mike O’Brien, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Interview, July 20, 2004; Louis Jacobs, Lone Star Dinosaurs (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995), pp. 3-4; Roland T. Bird, Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1985), p. 8. 5. James O. Farlow, The Dinosaurs of Dinosaur Valley State Park (Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 1993), no page number, section under heading “How the Tracks were Created and Preserved”; Jacobs, pp. 61-65; Spearing, p. 243; Robert T. Hill, “Paleontology of the Cretaceous Formations of Texas—The Invertebrate Paleontology of the Trinity Division,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Vol. VIII, (June 3, 1893): 12-15. 6. Farlow, “Of Tracks and the River,” in W. H. Shore, ed., Mysteries of Life and the Universe: New Essays from America’s Finest Writers on Science (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), pp. 68-69; Farlow, A Guide to Lower Cretaceous Dinosaur Footprints and Tracksites of the Paluxy River Valley, Somervell County, Texas, South-Central Section, Geological Society of America, Field Trip Guidebook, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 1987, p. 8; Jacobs, pp. 61-65; Ron Ralph, An Inventory of Cultural Resources Within the Texas Park System: November 1976 through October 1981, Texas Antiquities Permit 128 (Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, August 1996), p. 96; Nagle, p. 1; Baker Interview; Dismukes Interview; O’Brien Interview. Paleontologists, geologists, and ichnologists cannot determine an exact date for the dinosaur tracks. Parks and Wildlife personnel and brochures generally give the age of the tracks at about 113 million years. In his Cultural Resources inventory, archeologist Ron Ralph estimated 110 million years (Ralph, p. 96). Paleontologist James...