Experts at the Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, have recently managed to electronically preserve a 110-million-year-old dinosaur footprint that was removed from its original location decades ago. The original tracks were excavated from their site, and taken to Texas, where they were built into a bandstand inside a courthouse, sometime in the 1930s. The researchers therefore had no other viable alternative than to use laser technology to preserve as much of the prints as possible in an electronic format.

Portable 3D laser scanners were used for the initiative, experts at SMU say, because they had the ability to accurately record patterns and textures in their target, and to then feed these pieces of information to rapid 3D-prototyping machines that inscribed foam or resin. The scanning had to be made, the scientists said, because otherwise the prints, which belonged to a species of dinosaur identified in the 1930s as ichnospecies Eubrontes glenrosensis, might have been lost for ever. In this format, they at least have a chance of surviving.

A similar approach is currently being taken for artifacts around the world, which are also being scanned and modeled in 3D, for archiving in a massive database. Speaking about the current effort, SMU paleontology doctoral student Thomas L. Adams says that, “The track is scientifically very important. But it's also a historical and cultural icon for Texas.” According to the expert, the tracks more likely correspond to a theropod named Acrocanthosaurus, whose remains were most often found in Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina. This was a bipedal, three-toed, flesh-eating dinosaur, he adds.

The Dinosaur Valley State Park, the location from where the print was originally dug out, bears a massive number of fossilized dinosaur footsteps. More than 113 million years ago, the place was the shoreline of an ancient sea, and numerous lizards that came here for water or mating left their marks in the sand. The marks then petrified and got buried, and remained pristinely preserved for posterity.