Pecos County Camptosaur Tracks

In the arroyo southwest of this site are dinosaur tracks made 120 million years ago when area was part of sea that extended north from the Gulf of Mexico.

These tracks, embedded in rocks of the Comanchean Cretaceous period, were left by a Camptosaurus dinosaur, ancestor to the better known duck-billed Trachodon.

According to research, this plant-eating animal was about 20 feet long and ten feet tall. His hind legs were strong and longer than his arms which were used to grasp and tear food. His neck was short; head small; the tail long, perhaps equal in length to the body.

Measurement of the exposed tracks (17 1/2 inches wide and 21 inches long) determine that this Camptosaur's stride was 5 ft. 10 inches from toe to heel; his pace, 11 ft. 8 in.

The shallow sea in which this dinosaur (and other forms of animal and plant life) lived and died was gradually covered by deposits of mineral-laden earth. As this area rose and settled through hundreds of centuries, the buried organic matter was gradually converted through chemical changes to vast resources of petroleum, natural gas and sulphur.

This Camptosaur's tracks remain to remind mankind of the prehistoric age in which the oil industry had its infant beginnings.