Museum Announces Conservation of 113-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Trackways

A treasured 85-year-old exhibit showcasing dinosaur trackways has spent more than a dozen years out of public view with little certainty about its future. Now, however, Texas Science & Natural History Museum on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin has embarked on a multi-year project to conserve and rehouse some of the state’s most renowned fossilized footprints, made 113 million years ago by a sauropod and a theropod near what is now Glen Rose, Texas.

“This project represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect one of Texas’s most iconic fossil discoveries,” said Carolyn Connerat, managing director of Texas Science & Natural History Museum. “We’re not only preserving the past—we’re building something that will inspire future scientists, students and curious minds for decades to come.”

In the 1930s, paleontologist Roland T. Bird identified the fossilized tracks in the limestone bed of Texas’s Paluxy River. In 1940, Bird supervised the removal of two large limestone slabs bearing the tracks—one of which was sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the other brought to UT’s Texas Memorial Museum through a project of the Work Projects Administration. A small, stone building next to Texas Memorial Museum (now known as Texas Science & Natural History Museum) has housed the Lone Star State’s excavated slab ever since. However, the building closed to the public in 2013, due to structural concerns and interior exposure to environmental conditions that put the historically and scientifically important trackways at risk of deterioration. 

“The sauropod trackway that spans both slabs includes fore and hind footprint impressions that were scientifically described and named Brontopodus birdi in Bird’s honor,” said Dr. Pamela R. Owen, the museum’s longtime paleontologist and associate director. “These tracks remain designated reference specimens for this type of dinosaur footprint.”

Based on recommendations provided last year by a national conservation and restoration firm, the museum will protect the trackways from further damage by relocating the slabs to a controlled laboratory for conservation. Experts will then prepare the slabs with the dinosaur trackways for installation in a more protective, visitor-friendly environment.

This month, a UT Planning, Design and Construction team, coordinating with museum staff and project partners, will begin deconstructing the stone building and salvaging fossiliferous limestone blocks within it for use in a new Dinosaur Trackways Building. The museum plans to build a 2,000-square-foot building to house the conserved trackways and, for the first time, allow visitors to walk around them for viewing.

“This exhibit will expand the museum’s current STEM educational programming for preK-12 learners and all visitors,” Connerat said. “It will be a vital part of our work to share the stories of life in the natural world of Texas.”

Texas Science & Natural History Museum has launched a fundraising initiative to support this transformational project, including trackways conservation, exhibit development, accessibility enhancements, building construction and native gardens. For more information on the Dinosaur Trackways Building project visit sciencemuseum.utexas.edu.