Dinosaurs in Massachusetts

Plenny Moody was plowing his father's fields when he uncovered some imprints in the bed rock below the top soil which caught his attention. Being a hunter, as all New England farmers were, in 1802, he understood them as "tracks"; being a good hunter, he understood them to be the foot prints of bird tracks - he considered them to be giant turkey tracks; being a good New Englander, he figured that people should pay to see them. His commercial success is unrecorded, but his "find" of fossilized footprints was the first discovery (or at least recognition) of dinosaur footprints recorded in the entire world, at Moody Corners in South Hadley, MA.

These tracks in the rock were a mere curiosity until the_1830's when Edward Hitchock, LL.D. took an interest in them. Dr. Hitchock was a remarkable man; during his career, he was principal of Deerfield Academy, an Episcopal minister and pastor of a church in Conway, professor of chemistry and natural history, Geologist to the State of Massachusetts, and ultimately the third President of Amherst College. Dr. Hitchock undertook the first real scientific study of these "footprints" from the past.

To understand just how remarkable his studies were, we should understand that Darwin's seminal work on evolution was several years away. In Dr. Hitchock's era, the accepted paradigm of his day believed in the Creation Story, that life on this planet was only 4 or 5 thousand years old, that Noah took two of every creature aboard his vessel, that all species of animals that had ever lived on the planet were still here. The notion of "extinct" beings was yet to be believed._ _ Dr. Hitchock began his observations by trying to rule out every other possible explanation besides animal tracks for these markings in the rocks. He cut down through the stone, revealing a distinct three dimensional aspect. There was simply no way that "leaves" or "geological" events could account for these markings. He had also observed that these markings in the rock displayed a distinct "trail"; that is, he noted that the imprints in the rock were definitely sequential - left foot, right foot, and so on. No geological or vegetable activity could explain that. As a professional geologist, Hitchock had some appreciation for the age of the sandstone that he was working with; to be real general about the subject, let's say that the rock was formed some 65 to_300 million years ago; he also knew that no living being could account for these tracks. Quite the crises of faith in the paradigm, wouldn't you agree?

After accepting in his own mind that these were very ancient "tracks", Dr. Hitchock went to work determining what kind of being might have made them. This required that he study the feet of living beings. His inquiry closed the search to two possibilities -- "saurians", or lizards, and birds. Oddly enough, he chose birds for the majority of the tracks. Giant birds!

I can hear you chuckling. Giant birds! Everyone knows that dinosaurs were reptiles; cold-blooded, scaly, stupid, primitive lizards. The very name "dinosaur" means "terrible lizard". Well, we might say, Dr. Hitchock was out there on the frontier, dealing with a new and troublesome concept. He can be forgiven for his mistakes; after all, he was an Episcopalian. We might be content with the knowledge that despite the fact that he was wrong in his conclusions about the nature of these animals, he is still remembered as a pioneer in this field of dinosaur studies, maybe even as its founder. Oddly enough, neither may be true. It would appear that he is not widely accepted as a significant contributor to the field of dinosaur paleontology, and, ironically, it may be true that he was not wrong in his conclusions, at least not too far wrong!
Why did he choose birds? He noted that the classical pattern of "prints" denoted three toes forward, with a slight imprint of a "heal", and in some cases the indication of a fourth "reciprocating" toe; in the clearer prints, he observed the imprint of knuckles or joints, following a strange pattern of one joint for the reciprocating toe, two for the inside toe, three for the middle toe, and four for the outside toe. He noted that the impressions of the prints were much deeper in the front toes than the heal or reciprocating toe. He also realized that there were usually several sets of prints at any given site that all seemed to be parallel, to suggest that several animals were traveling together and heading in the same direction.

His studies indicated that birds generally have the same pattern of toes, though some, like woodpeckers have two toes forward and two toes back (which allows woodpeckers to walk up as well as down tree trunks with equal impunity)._Lizards, on the other hand, generally have five toes, though indeed, some like alligators have three toes forward. Birds have the same pattern of knuckles in their toes; they are the only animals known that have that pattern. Birds have only one bone in their lower leg, unlike most other animals including reptiles, which have two bones. This obliges the birds to step down first with their toes, followed by their heels, whereas, most reptiles step down on their heels and rotate forward onto their toes. Bird footprints left in mud or soft sand are therefore deeper in the toe impression than the heel or back toe impression, whereas reptile footprints are deeper in the heel and more shallow in the toes.

Dr. Hitchock's final observation of the footprints, that they seemed to indicate a gregarious or "herding" lifestyle because of multiple tracks heading in the same direction, was for him the most compelling. Dr. Hitchock understood that lizards or reptiles are cold blooded and as such are incapable of this type of behavior. Because they cannot regulate their internal metabolism, cold blooded animals change their rate of activity according to the outside temperature; as the temperature lowers, they become slower and visa versa. However, each animal is likely to change its internal metabolic rate somewhat differently than another. Therefore, if there occurred a rapid fall in temperature, each cold blooded animal in the herd would slow down at a different rate; if they were on the move, the herd would begin to spread out until it lost its cohesiveness. Indeed, reptiles do not live gregariously, except under specific conditions, like hibernation. Lizards do not go on walks together. Birds do. As warm blooded animals, birds tend to live in groups, or flocks; their internal metabolic control allows for gregarious living. All in all, Dr. Hitchock's conclusion that the tracks were made by birds can hardly be seen as capricious or unsophisticated.

What is perhaps most interesting is that recent discoveries in paleontology would seem to indicate that Dr. Hitchock was at least on the right trail, if not completely on the mark. In 1988, John (Little Jack?) Horner published his findings in a marvelous book entitled Digging Dinosaurs. Horner, working in Montana, uncovered fossilized nests of baby dinosaurs, including eggs, babies, and the remains of adults. These nests were "clumped" together, like penguin nests. The presence of adult remains would seem to indicate an unexpected aspect of dinosaur behavior --_parenting. His findings would indicate that, unlike reptiles_which tend to lay their eggs and simply walk off leaving their young to hatch and fend for themselves, these dinosaurs tended their young, fed them, and protected them. Moreover, Horner found evidence of vast herds of these animals – tens of thousands of them found in a relatively small area. Horner has discovered not only a new conception of dinosaur behavior, that of parenting, but a new dinosaur that he called Maiasaura, or Good Mother Lizard. He placed this dinosaur in the general category of Hadrosaurs or "duck billed" dinosaurs. Duck billed? Well yes, their sculls definitely showed evidence of a duck-like bill. Now we're getting somewhere. Giant ducks!

Horner seems to have affirmed the fact that at least some dinosaurs were gregarious in nature, parenting creatures, and that therefore they must have been far more physically and socially sophisticated than previous ideas about these creatures; he suggests that the evidence of these fossilized remains leads one to believe that at least some dinosaurs might have been warm blooded. As his co-writer put it, "these dinosaurs were not only making nests but taking care of their young, just as if they were not dinosaurs at all but immense, leathery robin redbreasts"._ _ So, to you, Jack Horner, may you keep on digging and discovering. To you, Dr. Hitchock, may you rest in peace, may your ideas assume new respect, and, like the fossils that you studied, may your writings shed some light on the past and the future. And to you, Plenny Moody, I hope you made a buck or two.