TPW TV: 112 Million Years
Friday, September 20th, 2013
Dinosaur Track at Dinosaur Valley State Park
This is Passport to Texas
Artist, photographer and sculptor, Mike O’Brien, has spent the past 15 years documenting tracks in the Paluxy River near Glen Rose made millions of years ago by dinosaurs. He’s featured this month on the Texas parks and Wildlife TV series. Producer Ron Kabele.
59— When he started this, he didn’t have access to all the cheap technology that he has now. Now he can do 3-D tracks, he can do geo-positioning of each track. And then, when you combine it with Google Earth, he gets some fascinating maps.
These red tracks are a pretty big acrocanthosaurus; and you can see this green line and how he goes from here, and then all of a sudden he turns real hard right here. It really tells quite a story.
What’s cool is the APP he’s going to make. A park visitor will be able to look on their iPhone and follow the tracks as they’re walking along the river. Is that awesome or what?
Sometimes, I get bogged down in the mechanics and the details and the drudgery of some of what has to be done to document them. But, every once in a while, you sit back and reflect and you get that sense of wonder about what it is you are actually seeing. When you see footprints made one after another, that’s as close to seeing a living dinosaur going about its activities as you’re going to get.
This segment airs the week of September 22. Check local listings.
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
Passport to Texas is a 
Passport to Texas is made available by: