File:The geological history of the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts - a popular account of its rocks and origin (1921) (14580620180).jpg

Identifier: geologicalhistor00mill (find matches)
Title: The geological history of the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts : a popular account of its rocks and origin
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Miller, William J. (William John), 1880-1965
Subjects: Geology Geology
Publisher: (Northampton, Mass. : The Hampshire Bookshop)
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Long ago President Hitchcock of Amherst carefully studied and published elaborate accounts of the footprints. His first article appeared in 1836. He described tracks from 38 localities scattered throughout the Connecticut Valley. The people of the valley commonly refer to these footprints as bird-tracks because Hitchcock so first described them and, in view of their shape and the lack of actual skeletons, this was then a very reasonable conclusion. The earliest known bird, however, lived during a later (Jurassic) period of geological time.
Text Appearing After Image:
FIG. 14. FOOTPRINTS OF A SMALL DINOSAUR ON A SLAB OF TRIASSIC SANDSTONE FROM THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY. LENGTH OF EACH TRACK, ABOUT FOUR INCHES. SPECIMEN AT SMITH COLLEGE.PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR.
What are these footprints like? How were they preserved in the rocks? What history do they record? We can perhaps best answer these questions by confining our attention to a single outcrop of the sandstone on which many tracks may now be seen. Best of all, and, so far as known to the writer, the finest of its kind on earth, is a ledge about 150x30 feet between the main road and the railroad three-fourths of a mile east of Mountain Park, or about half way between Smiths Ferry and Holyoke. Each year the writer conducts classes in geology to this wonderful ledge which he calls the “dinosaur ledge” because of the marvelous display of dinosaur tracks which it contains. It is truly a full-page illustration in natures great earth-book. The rock is a shaly sandstone which was deposited under water as a muddy fine sand in thin layers. The layers (strata) now show a strong tilt toward the east, but when they were deposited they were of course horizontal or nearly so. Dozens of tracks made by several sizes and species of dinosaurs are in an amazingly perfect state of preservation on the surface of the ledge. The tracks are literal footprints in the sands of time, the time when they were made having been no less than 8 or 10 million years ago!

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