It’s easy to think that something set in stone will remain for the ages. But a 190-million-year-old dinosaur track near the Hell’s Revenge trail has disappeared overnight.
“I’d seen that track on Monday about 4:30 in the afternoon,” Moab Cowboy Country Offroad Adventures owner and tour guide Kent Green said. “The next day on Tuesday around 4:00 I discovered it was gone.”
Green was guiding a small tourist group on Wednesday, Feb. 19 on the Hell’s Revenge trail in the Sand Flats area when he realized the track had been stolen and reported the theft to the Bureau of Land Management.
This particular track, Green said, “gives you a true impression of the footprint because it’s deep and clear.”
“It was a theropod, or three-toed meat-eating dinosaur, ” BLM paleontologist Rebecca Hunt-Foster said. “That theropod left its track about 190 million years ago.”
The thief or thieves seemingly pried off a large chunk of rock that included the track. Hunt-Foster said the chunk of rock likely weighs a couple hundred pounds.
That area of Hell’s Revenge includes a lot of dinosaur tracks and is both a common and easily accessible site, Green said.
“A lot of people don’t know the tracks are there and they park on them,” Green said. “We were working with the BLM last year and they were going to come in and barricade it off to keep people from driving on them.”
Hunt-Foster said the BLM had been working on getting funding to create protection for that site. The theft is so fresh they haven’t yet had time to update or adapt their plans.
Unfortunately, vandalism and attempted theft isn’t uncommon to historic and natural sites. People will sometimes try to do mold or cast a track, which is also illegal, Hunt-Foster said.
“Often when that happens it damages the track as well,” she said.
Other times, Hunt-Foster said, people will use tools to try to chisel or dig around a track, but they just end up destroying it.
“It’s unfortunate,” BLM law-enforcement ranger Tyler Fouss said. “They took it from all the people who enjoy going out there and seeing it.”
Because the theft occurred on federal land, it is considered a federal crime that could result in both fines and jail time, depending on the track’s determined value, Fouss said.
“The problem with assigning a value to a dinosaur track is that it can’t be replaced,” he said. “Sometimes the value will be based on what the product could be sold for on the black market. Sometimes if there’s damage to the site or track it’s based on what the cost of restitution would be to fix the track.”
The BLM, along with the Grand County sheriff’s office are currently investigating the case, a BLM press release stated. Investigators are following up on several leads people have called in, Fouss said.
The BLM is offering a reward for information leading to the identification of person(s) involved in the theft.
“The community is our eyes and ears and we hope that more people will have information and come to us,” Hunt-Foster said.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact BLM Law Enforcement at (801) 539-4082.
In the meantime, the tour outfitters have a new—even if unfortunate—teaching tool for the tourists.
“Now I’m going to show people and say ‘look what someone did – they destroyed a 190 to 160 million year old track in a matter of minutes,’” Green said. “There are a lot of things out here that are hidden secrets and it’s a privilege to see them.”
BLM offering reward for information
“The problem with assigning a value to a dinosaur track is that it can’t be replaced. Sometimes the value will be based on what the product could be sold for on the black market. Sometimes if there’s damage to the site or track it’s based on what the cost of restitution would be to fix the track.”
