Lisa: Looking at ankylosaur footprints again. So we’ve got toe, toe, and it gets a little funky over here. Then the back of foot. There’s skin impressions.

Lisa traces around a fossilized partial ankylosaur footprint sticking out from a boulder next to a road.

Richard: Let’s take a look at the skin impressions.

Little bumps of skin texture are visible on the heel of the footprint.

Lisa: Lumpy texture right there and there’s also slide marks.

Richard: You can see exit striations.

Lisa traces her finger along several straight lines that are visible at the back of the footprint.

Lisa: So as the tubercles, the grips on the bottom of the dinosaur’s foot slid into the muck, it left these little grooves.

Richard: Skin impressions are, well, there are more people noticing them more now, but not too long ago, twenty-some years ago, there were only a few footprints, Cretaceous dinosaur footprints that had been found with skin impressions. So it’s always nice to see those.