ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STAFFORD
An amateur paleontologist searching for leaf fossils has made a much bigger discovery: 110-million-year-old dinosaur tracks.
Jon Bachman, 50, first saw the desktop-sized prints in October 1995, when he was looking for leaf fossils in Stafford County.
``Once you've seen that many tracks, you have a sight image in your mind,'' said Bachman, who worked as a volunteer at the Culpeper Stone Co. where 3,000 dinosaur tracks were discovered in 1989.
``It's like calling up a picture.''
The tracks, in an area east of U.S. 1 in central Stafford, are the first found in the county, said Robert Weems of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Weems and Bachman determined that some of the prints were probably left by a theropod, a flesh-eating dinosaur that walked mainly on its hind legs. Other dinosaur tracks in the area appear to belong to an ornithopod, a plant-eating animal that walked upright.
Bachman and Weems believe the footprints were made in the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, when toothed birds and dinosaurs died out and early mammals developed.
Bachman, who teaches fourth grade at Leesylvania Elementary School in Prince William, also has found evidence that tiny anurans - amphibians like toads or frogs - lived in Stafford during that era.
- Associated Press
LENGTH: Short : 35 linesby CNB