A chunk of stone bearing dinosaur footprints has been carefully
lifted from the grounds of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md., scientists report. The dino tracks, thought to
have been left by three separate beasts more than 100 million
years ago, were discovered by amateur paleontologist Ray
Stanford in August 2012. The feature that first caught
Stanford's eye was a dinner-plate-sized footprint of a nodosaur,
a tanklike dinosaur studded with bony protuberances that roamed
the area about 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous
period (the period from 145 million to 65 million years ago that
was the end of the Mesozoic Era). This particular lumbering
leaf-eater must have been moving quickly across the prehistoric
mud, as its heel did not sink deeply into the ground. A closer
look at the site revealed two more prints. Stephen Godfrey, a
paleontology curator at the Calvert Marine Museum, who was
contracted to preserve the find, said he suspects one was left
by an ornithopod, possibly from th