Customer Reviews

Earth's First Steps: Tracking Life Before the Dinosaurs

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Growing up in west Texas, I spent decades exploring the desert on long treks armed with a stick, a canteen and the fantasy of finding lost gold minds, indian arrow heads or enigmatic fossils. Never once did I suspect that only a few miles away in the Robledo Hills of Las Cruces lay one the most magnificent undiscovered fossil sites on earth -- over forty layers of pristine Permian-era mudflat deposits containing trackways from over 1000 species -- a living snapshot of Earth's first land animals as they roamed over a wet beach 50 million years before the dawn of dinosaurs. Amazingly, many of these fossil footprints sites were quarried and built into taco stands, homes and fireplaces in Las Cruces without ever being recognized -- until they crossed the path of one man of amazing determination. Jerry MacDonald was a college dropout who spent 10 years working odd jobs. Unable to ignore his magnetic attraction to science, he was finally finishing a belated BS in geology at New Mexico State University in 1985 when he got his first glimpseof fossil tracks in a local museum. He would eventually spend over 10 years searching out, quarrying and cataloging fossil footprints in what has been called one of the biggest single-handed rock excavations ever made. But that task would be easy compared to the struggle of convincing skeptics the trackways were real, and finally gaining government protection for this precious porthole into the past. By the time he was finished, MacDonald would be credited with discovering and preserving the finest array of Permian era trackways on Earth. MacDonalds tells his life's story from a unique sociological perspective, explaining the progression from "prediscovery" to the final step of popularization. When I finished this book, there was no question in my mind that, except for MacDonald's herculean efforts, the world's finest and oldest footprints would still be crumbling undiscovered in the desert hills near Las Cruces. If this book whets your appetite for tracking extinct creatures, take a look at a comprehensive classic about some comparatively recent fossil footprints -- "Tracking Dinosaurs" by Martin Lockley.

-Auralgo