Bigfoot from Wyoming: The largest dinosaur foot found yet

Hey! I published on something, 18 years after I started the paper.

The awesome scientific article is here on PeerJ's website, open access for anyone to read and download. As far as I can tell, it's gotten almost 8000 reads so far, so not too shabby! I also did a companion blog post for them where you can read all kinds of information on why exactly it took 20 years from discovery to publication. Short version of the story: I got a job and it wasn't a huge priority to me.

KUVP 129716 "Annabelle". Bigfoot was found under the tail.

As someone that has to self-fund all my research projects, publication costs are a real issue. I wanted to go open-access as I think making another company richer by giving them the fruits of my labor (on a public specimen) is kinda wrong, but there are some expenses in order to publish it properly. I simply don't have the free cash to do that.

More brachiosaur material from the site, me for scale.

Then came February. I had already assembled a small team of experts to finally move the project along, as I was getting tired of constipating science. Emanuel Tschopp and Femke Holwerda were Team Europe, and David Burnham and Myself were Team Kansas. We had no idea where we would publish but we had already begun preparing measurements and basic text. PeerJ surprisingly had a special promotion for their 5th anniversary offering to waive publication costs for articles submitted during that month. That was an offer too hard to pass up, but could we do it?

Archaeopteryx gawks at the metatarsals

The writing crew huddled over Google Hangouts and assembled a pretty decent draft in just 2 weeks (!!!) complete with figures for submission. Femke referred to it as "Rambo Writing" and I don't think it's too far off the mark as a description. We submitted it and waited.

Making the model of the MT IV

In a few weeks we heard back: Accepted with minor revisions. Minor except we had to refigure all of the original bones. So off I went to Kansas with Triebold Paleontology Inc's Artec Spider scanner and 3D render rig. Not included in the paper (but existing) are complete 3D models of every bone on this foot. Contact KUVP if you need access for research, I think they came out pretty well.

Completed model of MT II

After that, things went pretty well! We resubmitted and it was just a very short time between then and it coming out to the world. Press was also pretty kind (though they kept referring to me as "Dr." and thought it was a footprint instead of an actual foot). Heck, I made it into Newsweek! Pretty wild.

In the news(week)!

Why didn't we say it's definitely from Brachiosaurus? Simple: No Morrison Formation Brachiosaurus specimen has ever had any pes material recovered with it, so we didn't have any overlapping elements to compare with. Could it be Brachiosaurus? Sure, even probably, but we simply don't have that smoking gun just yet.

Restoring a Brontosaurus

Growing up in the 80's and 90's was a strange time for a dinosaur fan. On one hand there was a plethora of old books in the library on dinosaurs telling us all about Brontosaurus. On the other, we were getting it beat into our heads that Brontosaurus didn't exist, and it's really Apatosaurus. It was all confusing for those few of us that were actually actively interested in these animals. Today Emanuel Tschopp published a paper resurrecting the genus Brontosaurus as valid. Where does this come in? In college I was lucky enough to work on sauropods, but never on the most famous ones. That all changed almost 8 years ago.

Our company was hired to reprepare, restore, remount, mold and cast the "Apatosaurus" specimen on display at the University of Wyoming geological Museum. This massive beast, also known as the "Sheep Creek" specimen after where it was found, was discovered and excavated in 1902 by a Carnegie Museum crew led by the great John Bell Hatcher. The specimen (CM 563) went back to Pittsburgh where it was quickly prepared in an effort to get the beast mounted and on display. Just before the mounting process was to start, an even more complete beast was recovered. Priorities shifted, and the new Apatosaurus went on display. It's still there at the Carnegie, remounted just a few short years ago.

The old mount, a young Brent for scale

CM 563 sat in storage for nearly a half a century until Dr. Samuel Knight from the University of Wyoming arranged for the specimen to be brought to their museum. He spearheaded the effort to restore incomplete bones, fabricate missing ones and get the whole specimen mounted in a current (for then) pose. The tail-dragging pose didn't age well, especially after the "dinosaur renaissance" which re-imagined these animals as more dynamic beasts.

Pubis bones never mounted on the old mount. Old Carnegie numbers still on them

Where do we come in? Director at that time Dr. Brent Breithaupt contacted us as a local (ish) company that could make copies and provide the museum with a revenue stream with the royalties from sales. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? With 100 years of work on a specimen, you know it never is!

before and after pics of the bones. Yes, originals were painted back in the day.

Hardware cloth, plaster and metal rod restoration from 1950's

Once we had everything in the shop we used special techniques to clean the specimen of its coating of paint to reveal several generations of restoration and conservation work. Everything except for the pelvis/sacrum, which was left on its pedestal and molded in place. It was also the set up for an epic April Fool's joke, but that's a story for another time. In any case, we were able to preserve the historic numbering on the specimen (including some possible field numbers), document its condition, and restore the specimen to good as new condition.

Molding the pelvis in situ

We mounted the skeleton back at the museum in nearly the same pose (sauropods are huge, so unless you have a big open building, your options are limited). One major change though was getting that dragging tail off the ground and up in the air. Much better! You can now see cast copies of this specimen in museums across the world. I'm lucky enough to have worked on this historic specimen of Brontosaurus parvus.

Swinging its tail over Big Al.