Roughly 200 million years before the Civil War began, dinosaurs roamed what is now Gettysburg National Park. While no fossilized rocks have been found in Gettysburg, they have been found in the same rock formation about 3 miles down the road in the now abandoned Trostle Quarry. Fossilized sandstone or siltstone rocks removed from this quarry were used to build the stone bridge that crosses Plum Run on South Confederate Avenue. The coordinates will take you to the easiest to find footprints on the bridge, although there are several others that can be found...along with fossilized ripple marks and worm bore holes. These footprints belonged to atreipus milfordensis, a dog-sized plant eater which roamed eastern America. Atreipus is a poorly-known ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaur known only from its fossilized tracks. No fossilized bones have been attributed to this ichnogenus. The two sizes of footprints indicate that this small dinosaur walked on four legs and its rear legs were much larger and longer than the front legs. Atreipus was roughly 6 feet (1.8 m) long, and lived during the late Triassic period...about 220 million years ago.
Please use the parking spaces on the right side of the road at the provided coordinates.
In order to claim a find for this cache, you must prove that you were able to find the fossilized Atreipus footprint by providing three items to the cache owner (*****do NOT post this information in your log! The information can be provided by sending a message through our profile.***** ):
- an estimated size of the footprint(s)
- the bearing (in degrees) that the large hind footprint is pointing (hint - use the compass on your GPS)
- a picture of one of the footprints beside your GPS (If you see a picture of the "tracks" in the gallery, it's because they are other tracks and/or just a picture of a rock that someone thinks is a track.
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Any logs that are not supported with a message containing this info will be removed. Good Luck!!