Posted for Emma Marris

Regular readers of this blog will remember a post about a cool palaeontology finding: more than 1,000 dinosaur footprints preserved on a three-quarter acre site in the US Southwest. We also mentioned that there was a whiff of doubt about the so-called “dinosaur dance floor”. One scientist thought that the features could be geologically-formed potholes rather than the lasting impressions of a sauropod samba.

A week after the find was publicized, on October 30th, four curious palaeontologists hiked to the site and, well, they weren’t impressed. “There simply are no tracks or real track-like features at this site,” said Brent Breithaupt, director and curator of the University of Wyoming’s Geological Museum. So maybe they were potholes after all.

The original team has graciously offered to team up with the doubters to further examine the site.

University of Utah press release.

Image: footprint or pothole? Winston Seiler / University of Utah