By Dave Tucker November 15, 2012
The giant bird foot track as originally found in the Racehorse Creek landslide. Click to enlarge.
A journal paper about the giant Chuckanut bird tracks attributed to Diatryma giganteus has been published. The authors are George Mustoe, Dave Tucker and Keith Kemplin (George and Keith are the codiscoverers of the tracks). The paper is published in the journal Palaeontology. This enlightened journal allows dissemination of papers via the internet, rather than requiring purchase. So, I am pleased to attach the pdf in this post. It will also be attached to the main page about the giant foot prints. It describes the fossil tracks, why we believe they were made by the giant flightless bird Diatryma, what the tracks tell us about the lifestyle of the big bird, and why we assigned the name Rivavipes giganteus to the tracks. The paper should be readable to about everyone, as specialized terminology is kept to a minimum other than references to the anatomical parts. Click this link to open the research paper pdf file: Giant Eocene Bird Footprints paper, Palaeontology
Filed under: Chuckanut Formation, Diatryma, fossils, North Cascades geology | Tagged: Chuckanut formation fossils, Dave Tucker, diatryma, Eocene birds, George Mustoe, giant bird foot prints, Keith Kemplin, Racehorse Creek landslide |
Northwest Geology Field Trips 
The Diatryma paper was very interesting. I grew up along the front range hills of Colorado (Golden and Morrison area) and these types of foot prints always excited my imagination.
Also on page 3,Fig.2 Wyoming and Montana are reversed.
Oooops! Too late to fix this boo boo.
dt
kudo’s
Cool, nicely done Dave and others!
Congrats and thanks for all your work on big bird.
Spent Sunday March 1st, was easy to find very rocky up hill road to get to the trail head, was amazed at the amount of parcels there were and the huge leaf fossils are amazing, definitely coming back and exploring further up to the top of the hill and bringing a better pack