Dinosaur Valley Park

About an hour from Waxahachie there is a park where "Dinosaurs once roamed."  Although many of the tracks were removed from the ground and sold when this was private property, there are still some remnants in the river bed.  We decided that this was a great adventure for a fieldtrip. 

At the park there are two dino statues- an Apatosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus.  There is a funny story about how two competing paleontologists fought to uncover the complete skeletal remains of a sauropod. One of them

 put together an Apatosaurus but it was incomplete. The other thinking he found a different dinosaur called his a Brontosaurus.  In his rush to beat out the other guy he attached the wrong skull to his dino and released his findings to the world.  Of course the people of the world embraced the model, drew pictures and made sculptures, wrote books and even re-created the skeleton for all their museums.  

Unfortunately in time other scientists determined that the Brontosaurus was actually just an Apatosaurus with the wrong head.  At this state park they went back and tried to change the head of their Brontosaurus, but it just didn't look right, so now instead of going for scientific accuracy they just put the old head back on, put up a sign to notify the public and chalked it up to a cultural learning experience.  The funny thing is that neither of the statues on display reflect the dinosaurs who made the tracks at the park.  I'm sure there is a lesson in this whole thing.

Here are some pictures of the kids and the tracks...

Of course a few muddy indentations didn't hold their attention long and soon the trip to see the dinosaur tracks became a trip to play in the river.  

They found a nice mossy rock bed with a couple spots deep enough to float/swim, some mud, and a floating log.  The day was complete.