by Guest Columnist Donna Anderson
Living in Golden, we are familiar with the amazing dinosaur tracks and bones at Dinosaur Ridge near Morrison. But did you know that Golden has its own dinosaur trail, with different dinosaurs than those near Morrison? Golden is also home to the first Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) tooth and likely the first T. rex footprint found in North America!
A T. rex tooth was discovered on the southwest flank of South Table Mountain, near the intersection of Rimrock Street and Golden Road, in 1874 by Peter Dotson, a student, and Arthur Lakes, part-time drawing and geology instructor at the newly-established Colorado School of Mines. The tooth was sent to O. C. Marsh at the Yale Peabody Museum where it lay forgotten until it was identified around 2000 by Kenneth Carpenter, a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Lesson: Be careful what you put in the basement and forget!
Triceratops Trail, west of Fossil Trace Gold Course, is home to a host of dinosaur tracks. A rare T. rex footprint is present next to tracks of a duck-bill dinosaur, Edmontosaurus. On the easternmost side of the trail are tracks of the three-horned dinosaur, Triceratops, hence the name of the Trail. From about 69 to 66 million years ago T. rex hunted Edmontosaurus and Triceratops, among other dinosaurs, in an ancient tropical rainforest and swamp in Golden.
Other fossil tracks in Golden include those of Iguanodon-like dinosaurs, as well as crocodile swim marks and ultra-rare bird-tracks. Much older than T. rex, the track sites are all within rocks of the Dakota Hogback at the north and south edges of the City, but the sites are not open to the public due to hazards from old clay mines.
Who knew that Golden was such a hotbed of dinosaur activity?
Guest Columnist Donna Anderson and Paul Haseman published a fantastic book called Golden Rocks! about the geology and mining history of Golden. You can read it for free online!
