DINOSAUR TRACKS IN HAMILTON COUNTY, TEXAS 



W. E. WRATHER 



Dallas, Texas 



Attention has been called by E. W. Shuler to the occurrence of 

 dinosaur tracks in the Glen Rose limestone of Lower Cretaceous 

 age, near the town of Glen Rose, Somervell County, Texas/ 

 Another interesting occurrence of similar tracks has recently come 

 to light in the extreme southern portion of Hamilton County, 

 Texas, about sixty miles south-southwest of the first-mentioned 

 locality (Fig. i). 



The tracks in Hamilton County are also in limestone belonging 

 to the Glen Rose formation. They are exposed in the bed of 

 Cottonwood Creek (Fig. 2), a small headward tributary of Lam- 

 pasas River, and are confined to a single stratum of rather soft, 

 compact, yellowish limestone about a foot thick, which for a 

 distance of probably 800 feet makes the bed of the creek. In the 

 Glen Rose locality the tracks were evidently made by one indi- 

 vidual moving continuously in the same direction; but in Hamilton 

 County they were made by a number of individuals, and the tracks 

 point in every direction of the compass, this spot seemingly having 

 been a favorite haunt of dinosaurs of every size and presumably, 

 also, of every age. 



The examination upon which these notes are based was made 

 hurriedly and without adequate means properly to clear the creek 

 bed of the accumulated debris. Normally this portion of the bed 

 of Cottonwood Creek is covered with several feet of water, but the 

 unusually dry summer season of the past year offered a favorable 

 opportunity to examine the footprints, since the creek was free 

 from running water; but it developed that cattle which frequent 

 the water holes along the creek had worked down shale and gravel 

 from the banks in such quantities that almost the entire surface 



' Amer. Jour. Sci., Vol. XLIV (October, 1917), pp. 294-98. 



354 



