Trip J: Connecticut Mesozoic trackways and vertebrate fossils of the Yale Peabody Museum

Early Jurassic trackways at Dinosaur State Park - AM

Gallery tour and guided collections exploration at the Yale Peabody Museum - PM

This one-day field trip combines examination of trackways left by Mesozoic vertebrates on the mud of an Early Jurassic floodplain with guided exploration of the vertebrate fossil collections of the Yale Peabody Museum. In the morning, we will visit Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, to view thousands of tracks and other body impressions that together constitute perhaps the most abundant evidence in the world of Early Jurassic land vertebrate behavior. In the afternoon, we will explore the Yale Peabody Museum vertebrate collections, among the oldest and largest in the country, which feature numerous important stem-group birds; O.C. Marsh’s Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs and mammals; comprehensive holdings from the Western Interior Seaway; one of the best collections of complete or near-complete Paleogene mammal skeletons on the planet;…