2000, Portsmouth:

Talks:

• Cleaning fossil material with Lasers. Lorraine Cornish.
• Managing a barrier film 'microclimate enclosure'. Adrian Doyle.
• Skeleton in the cupboard: using dermestid beetles for cleaning bones. Michaela Forthuber.
• One solution to producing a replica of a large specimen on display in the Natural History Museum. David Gray.
• New technology to reveal the past. Sabine Gwosdek.
• Dinosaur trackways in Oxfordshire. Juliet Hay.
• Messel pit: Research excavations in a World Heritage Monument. Norbert Micklich.

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Dinosaur trackways in Oxfordshire

Juliet Hay

The presence of dinosaur footprints at Ardley, 20km northeast of Oxford, were brought to the attention of staff at Oxford University Museum of Natural History in the spring of 1997. Criss-crossing the exposed surface of Jurassic limestones laid down some 168 million years ago, were the trackways of theropod and sauropod dinosaurs. Between 30 and 40 trackways were identified, some up to 200 meters in length.

Together with the Department of Earth Sciences, museum staff measured and described the site, and made moulds and casts of the better-preserved trackways. A 60 meter long replica trackway, showing evidence of both the walking and running locomotion of a theropod dinosaur, was recreated on the lawn outside the OUMNH.

This talk will describe the field techniques used to create the moulds and subsequent casts, in sometimes challenging weather conditions.