Is this a dinosaur footprint? (Discovered in Cambodia)

[Samnang Nuon]

 

My name is Samnang Nuon and I am a student at a school in Cambodia called the Liger Leadership Academy. LINK

 

My school, the Liger Leadership academy  is a unique project based experiential school for Cambodian secondary students selected from throughout the country. We learn subjects areas contents by conducting real research or projects and learning about Cambodia by going out to explore and doing things around the country.

 

Several months ago we did a project about the geology of Cambodia. There is little written about, known or understood by the general public about this topic. So, we invited a recent graduating geology major from the University of Minnesota to come and lead the project. It was great and she taught our students about field research, etc. They did three one week trips throughout the country to document the information and learn see the real deal. They created the following bi-lingual Facebook page to begin helping people here know about geology. Geology of Cambodia Facebook

Geology is not a popular major here in Cambodia. Therefore, there is no geology program, major, etc. in any university in this country.

 

However, there is a Ministry of Mines and Energy here and the students of our school went to interview them about geology in Cambodia. They met with the Minister for the whole ministry and one thing he told them is that they, just this past year, discovered dinosaur tracks in rural region at Battambang northern Cambodia. Along with the location of the site, he recently emailed me this:

 

" During the last survey to the site, our staff and paleontologist of the Department of Mineral Resources of Thailand found trackways of both bipedal and quadrupedal dinosaur. As I know, the site is within a private property and land is reworked, but you might find footprint in surrounding area. I also planned to talk with Battambang department of Mines and Energy and Battambang provincial authority on possible way to protect the remaining area for conservation. I hope we can cooperate in keeping the site safe.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

SIENG Sotham

Deputy Director General

General Department of Mineral Resources"

 

Unfortunately, the ministry does not have budget, time, staff, etc. to realistically pursue this. I am very interested in having a group of my high school friends learn from this possibility. First, learn what to do scientifically with a site. Additionally, write about it. To my knowledge, there has never been evidence of dinosaurs in this country (I think for many reasons) and I would like my team to write articles, research papers, create documentation for media to get young people throughout the country here interested. There is no university here to take on such a project. But, it would be perfect for us. The students at my school, in the past few years have written two books that have been sent by the Ministry of Education to all the government schools in the country as a part of their curriculum. Remarkably, I know we are up for a rigorous, scientific challenge.

 

But, what I don't know what it is I’m unsure if the footprint is real. I know very little information about dinosaurs.

My learning coordinator, Jeff Holte of the school has spent the last two weekends traveling to the site to take some photos and have done some casts of the tracks. I would be very interested in you looking at the photos I have attached to tell me if these are probably a real dinosaur tracks.

 

The site is about 40 km from Battambang towards the Thai border. To make it interesting, there are snakes and still land mines (from Khmer Rouge regime) in the area. The coordinates are found where they have been filling in a piece of land to build on at some point. They obviously moved big pieces of sandstone to the sides of the land and that is where I found some things in the photos attached. The site is mostly covered over but there are some boulders and small outcroppings on the sides. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Let me know what you think.

 

Contact me if you got any idea: samnang.n@ligercambodia.org

s.nounsinoeun@ligerlearning.org

 

Thanks in advanced,

Samnang

 

[Fossildude19]

Welcome to the Forum.  

 

Your item is shaped more like pterosaur footprints I have seen, rather than dinosaur footprints. 

However the area marked out on the following picture makes me dubious of that claim.

 

 

The overlapping edge to the matrix seems unusual to me.

I could be wrong, but it seems odd to me. 

Hopefully, some other people will be able to weigh in on this. 

Welcome again.

Regards,

[Samnang Nuon]

 

 

Thank you so much for your reply. Your response is very useful for us to further investigate on this footprint. My team and I have started to look at the some of the background information about the pterosaur such as its behavior and environment and some of its previously investigated footprints as well. After we have done some research, we have found some similarity between our footprint we discovered and the old footprint investigation. However, our research is not enough to know everything about it to do our own validation. Therefore, if you can tell us more about the pterosaur footprint specification and why make you think that the footprint is a pterosaur. We have looked and tried to analyze at the amazing trademark that you have pointed out, but we don’t know why did the trademark make you doubt your claim.

 

Since my learning coordinator has done some casting to this footprint and I would love to show you some of the images of it because I think it might help you to better analyze it. However, the casting that I'm going to show you, it wasn’t that clear and quality because my learning facilitator did not have any experience about casting it. Because of your response, we made a decision to go to the site for our first time to do a better investigation on it. One of the idea that we want to do there is to recast all of the footprints (using clay and/or plaster of Paris). Since we are new to dinosaurs, we have never experienced casting a real dinosaur track before. It would be helpful for you to give us the information about casting like the materials and the procedures. When we reach our research site, we will know for sure that we’ll do casting, but we do not know anything else that could help us with our research and discovery. If you could tell us if there is an activity or field-research that can help us pursue our goals and also to make this research more effective.

 

We’re really appreciative of your response and your support about this new discovery. Your collaboration will help us to reach our accomplishment. We would really love to contact you by Skype so we could question you some more information.

 

Thanks again for this amazing response, we are very excited to hear more from you.

 

 

Best,

Samnang Nuon

 

My contact

samnang.n@ligercambodia.org

 

 

[Fossildude19]

How to cast dinosaur footprints.

 

I am not a track expert, on either dinosaurs or pterosaurs, and this is just a guess, really. 

 

I only suggested pterosaur based on the shape of the footprint. 

To me, it appears to have more in common with the shape of some pterosaur footprints, than dinosaur footprints.

 

However, I am unsure as to the validity of the footprint claim, as the area I highlighted in the picture is overhanging the print, ... meaning that the chunk of rock covering the "print" had to either break out in an unusual way, or be worn away, ...  to leave that sort of overhang.  

Also, the lack of definition of individual toe prints makes this footprint suspect. 

 

On the other hand, the lack of definition could be indicative of the print being an under-print, meaning that it shows the layer of rock beneath the actual foot print.

 

I think an expert in footprints would need to be contacted to have any positive ID given. 

 

Your item, for me, elicits more questions, than actual answers, I'm afraid.  

Kind regards,