Tracking down prehistoric find

Manual teacher's ankylosaur print might change textbooks

By James B. Meadow, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 09:00 p.m., May 21, 2008
Updated 04:25 p.m., May 22, 2008

Linda Mcconnell / Special To The Rocky

Manual science teacher Kent Hups and students, from left, Breeanna Herrera, Corrinne Webber and Victoria Trujillo enjoy themselves while inspecting Hups' recent find, a 9-inch-by-12-inch fossil footprint of an ankylosaur.

Coming now to a theater near you, Colorado Hups and the Footprint of Destiny.

OK, OK. So no one's going to be making a swashbuckling adventure film about Manual High School science teacher Kent Hups. But that doesn't mean his discovery of a 150-million- year-old ankylosaur footprint hasn't launched a few ripples throughout the paleontology community.

"This is a very big deal. It's the first time an ankylosaur track has ever been found anywhere in the world from the Jurassic (Period)," says professor Martin Lockley, the director of the the Dinosaur Tracks Museum at the University of Colorado-Denver and a former professor of Hups. "It's also 40 million years older than any other ankylosaur track we've ever had," adds Lockley.

Hups' fossil track also shows an animal bigger than previously thought. The ankylosaur he found would have been some 25 feet long and weighed about four tons, theorizes Lockley.

Lottery in sandstone

"I tease Kent that he's good at finding bones but not so good at finding tracks," says Lockley, smiling. "Now he's gone and proved me wrong."

Not that it was easy - or planned.

There was Hups, ensconced on a dig in the Cactus Park area near Grand Junction on March 29, looking for, well, anything, really. He and his colleague Mike Pickering had decided to take a break from digging for dinosaur bones when Hups just idly "flipped over a few rocks" and - Holy prehistoric cow!

"I starting jumping up and down, thinking, 'I should have bought a lottery ticket today,' " says Hups, recalling the moment.

Because there in front of him, etched in the red-beige sandstone, was a perfect footprint - or track - of the five-toed ankylosaur, a relative placid cousin of the stegosaur, known as the "tank of the dinosaur world" because of the thick armored plates that covered its body.

The find was so stupendous that Hups and Pickering felt compelled to cut it from the rock and then lug the resultant 120-pound slab up and down over a half-mile of steep hills and washes.

"Our arms must have been three inches longer than when we started," says Hups.

But to the native son who's been "dinosaur crazy" since he was a little boy, it was worth it.

"This changes how people think. Things like this keep science going," says Hups. "This is what people look for their entire life and never find."

Then, after a pause, he says, "This is big enough to make it onto Leno."

Still, he's not serious. We think.

Persistent, determined

After all, he admits that paleontologist types like himself are a pretty obsessive breed, the types who "are always looking for something. I've got knots on the top of my head from hitting it on rocks because I was looking down."

"You just get bit by the bug. It's like being Indiana Jones and digging for buried treasure out in some secret place. You don't even tell anyone where the place is; you want to keep it to yourself."

Regarding his find, he says, "I don't know if this was luck or destiny. But I guess it doesn't matter, does it?"

Nor was this the first time Hups got slapped upside the head by destiny. Back in 1994, he was digging in the same area and discovered the most complete ankylosaur skeleton on the planet.

The fact that it took 14 years to make another big find speaks to what Lockley calls "Kent's determination. Persistence and determination - that's what you need to be a good paleontologist."

Do you need anything else?

"Well, you need a love of the subject, a love of outdoor exploration and a lot of patience," he adds.

But, unlike Indiana Jones, there are apparently some things a paleontologist doesn't need.

Asked if he ever wields a bullwhip, Hups says, "No, but I have a rock hammer. Does that count?"

Not if you're going to make it onto Leno.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

Armored herbivore

* Name: Anklyosaur (An-KY-lo-sor)

* Time: Late Jurassic and Cretaceous periods 150 million to 65 million years ago.

* Size: A low-slung animal, 25 to 30 feet long, 4 feet high, about 4 tons

* Defenses: Bony plates on back; hornlike projections on head and sides; large bony club at the end of a long tail

* Diet: Low-growing, soft plants. Anklyosaurs had a small, beaklike mouth with few teeth and, like other herbaceous dinosaurs, swallowed gizzard stones to help grind food.

* Where to see Hups' footprint find: The Dinosaur Depot Museum in Canon City

• May 22, 2008

  6:51 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  BlueSled writes:

  So, they figured that all out from one little plaster blob they call a 'print'? That would be laughable in any other type of science, but these guys get a break from reality for some reason.

  Here's a book that shows paleontologists how to construct any 'dinosaur' of their liking, entirely from chicken bones:

  http://www.ocii.com/~dpwozney/dinosau...

• May 22, 2008

  8:58 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Bagel writes:

  Figured out...its age, size, and weight? One is easily testable, the other two fit to a model. If you know the proportions of something, you can easily extrapolate from a footprint.

  I don't understand what you take issue with.

• May 22, 2008

  9:52 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  TONEtheBONE writes:

  Aliens put that footprint there.

• May 22, 2008

  9:54 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  farsidefan writes:

  Oh my goodness ! Can you believe that this guy teaches in a public school ! Wow ! Unbelievable that a public school teacher is this intelligent !
  If you get a chance read the article in the Post. They give some background on the guy and his previous jobs. One telling sentence : I had to take a significant cut in pay to become a teacher.
  We are lucky he chose this calling.
  Atta Boy !

  Bropo: Actually, this find is 40 million years OLDER than the previous finds. Before this find, the earliest one was around 120 million years old and this one is around 150 million years old.
  Alley Oop probably saw this thing wandering around.

• May 22, 2008

  10:38 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  opinionatedcolo writes:

  There always has to be one ignorant poster on this type of story, afraid to understand facts and science because they disprove the mythology they accept without the slightest evidence. People like bluesled choose to reject basic tenants of biology, physics, anatomy, geology and a number of other scientific disciplines because they all cast doubt on his interpretation of a book written thousands of years ago by people who still believed in monsters and that the earth was the center of the universe.

  I tend to ignore many of these doubters as I am confident that in a competitive world my kids, who are and will be educated in science, will out compete kids whose parents force them into ignorance. The only worry is that people like bluesled tend to try to force their beliefs on others.

• May 22, 2008

  4:14 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  me2 writes:

  Wonderful, every second person in the Grand Valley has a geology degree and knows which formations to look into for fossils and prints and a front ranger finds this.

  Good for him. I would send him a congrats letter but I am busy making a dinosaur out of chicken bones and trying to turn the bones to stone.