Fossil Friday: The Mystery Behind This Rising Dinosaur Footprint Revealed!

Welcome back to #FossilFriday! 🦖 Join Will as he explores the fascinating world of dinosaur footprints, featuring an amazing Hadrosaur footprint found in Montana, now on display at the Saint Louis Science Center’s Fossil Prep Lab.
This well-preserved footprint belongs to a young juvenile Hadrosaur, a group of dinosaurs commonly known as "duck-billed dinosaurs." What makes this footprint unique is how it appears to rise out of the rock, a curious feature explained by the process of fossilization. Millions of years ago, this Hadrosaur walked along a shoreline, leaving a footprint in the wet sediment. Over time, the print was filled with mud and other sediments, which eventually hardened into rock. Geological forces and erosion gradually revealed the footprint, making it appear as if it's pushing out of the ground.
The process that preserved this footprint, called lithification, involves the compaction of sediments or the binding of sedimentary grains with mineral cement. This fossil, an epirelief, provides a direct record of the dinosaur's activity and behavior, offering more insights than skeletal fossils alone.
Discover the science behind this captivating fossil and learn how such traces of the past are preserved. 🔍 Join us for more prehistoric exploration at the Science Center! www.slsc.org/v...
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