Culpeper Quarry: Triassic dinosaur footprints in rift basin sediments

Geologist Callan Bentley visits the Luck Stone aggregate company's Culpeper Quarry, near Culpeper, Virginia. Here, Triassic sedimentary strata record the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea about 200 million years ago. When these rocks were unlithified silt, sand, and mud, dinosaurs ran and walked over their surface, leaving behind numerous substantial footprints arrayed in a handful of trackways (linear sequences).

[@EricFielding]

Great to see those dinosaur footprints. We thank the quarry operations folks for noticing the footprints and saving them when they got to that layer of rock.

[@kimberlykessing4551]

Prof Bentley, great find and thank you for sharing more Virginia geology!

[@davemarney5716]

Retired geology enthusiast here, I live in Fairfax, would love an opportunity to see these fossils!

[@annikaw5068]

Sedimentary record meets paleontology! So fantastic we have this gem right in our backyard in VA

[@joelbrown3935]

thank you thank you for sharing this site! Tell us more about the history of the finding.