Far-flung dino? Wyoming, Scotland tracks cue study - Yahoo! News

It's a Jurassic curiosity: As far as anyone can tell, the fossilized, three-toed dinosaur tracks in north-central Wyoming and on Scotland's coast are indistinguishable.

Even after painstaking measurements and statistical analysis, University of Glasgow paleontologist Neil Clark can't identify any differences between the two sets of 170 million-year-old tracks.

"The fact that the footprints in Wyoming and the ones in Scotland are so similar suggest that they may have been produced by a very similar kind of dinosaur, if not the same species," he said during a recent phone interview from his home in Glasgow, Scotland.

If the same dinosaur species made the tracks, the discovery would be as earthshaking as a mighty apatosaurus. No one has ever been able to say for certain that the same dinosaur species was responsible for fossil tracks discovered at separate locations, much less thousands of miles apart.

Now, American scientists are preparing to scrutinize the tracks further. They will use three-dimensional mapping technology that is revolutionizing the study of dinosaur tracks — and promises to enable scientists to make detailed, intercontinental comparisons without leaving their offices.

via Far-flung dino? Wyoming, Scotland tracks cue study - Yahoo! News.