Tracks More Common than Bones
| Consider this: one dinosaur leaves one skeleton, but that one dinosaur leaves thousands of tracks. The dinosaur will leave many tracks in many environments, and therefore it is likely that at least some of the tracks will be preserved. A skeleton, however, is deposited in one area, and if conditions are not perfect, the bones will not be preserved. So, tracks have the advantage of abundance. Tracks have long been considered inferior to bones since tracks cannot usually be identified to the species level. Never-the-less, tracks are very common and can provide a great deal of useful information to the paleontologist, and can even give information that a body fossil cannot--e.g. speed and gait. |