Recording a find

You can’t take these footprints back with you, so how will you record your find? Richard shares some of his notes. What else do you write down?

Richard sits near a piece of rock that has a theropod footprint outline in chalk on it.

Richard: This is not a track slab that we’re going to collect. We’re not actually collecting anything here, but we can at least take notes about it, and where it is located so that another expedition can find it again. So we get a GPS position...

Richard picks up his handheld GPS.

Richard: and then we make some field notes.

Richard opens his small yellow notebook.

Richard: Do a description of what you found. Of course we always like to know what time things are found.

Richard pulls a pocket watch out of his shirt pocket.

Richard: I’m gonna I make a notation here about the location. Cause you never know down the road who’s going to be interested in in something like this.

Holding his GPS Richard makes a note of the coordinates of the footprint in his notebook.