Moenave Dinosaur Tracks

Hundreds of preserved dinosaur footprints in 200-million-year-old mud, free to visit

About ten kilometres west of Tuba City, just off Highway 160, an unsigned dirt turnoff leads to one of the more accessible dinosaur trackways in North America. Hundreds of three-toed footprints of early Jurassic theropods — small, agile, bipedal hunters — are preserved in slabs of reddish Kayenta Formation sandstone, exposed across a flat area of perhaps a hectare.

The site is on Navajo land and is nominally free to visit, but a Navajo guide will materialise as you arrive, and a tip of five to ten dollars is expected and well-deserved — the guides know which tracks are authentic, can point out claw marks and tail drags, and sell decent jewellery on a folding table at the trailhead. Bring water and sun protection; there is no shade. The whole stop takes about thirty minutes and is an easy combine with a drive to or from the Grand Canyon's east rim.

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The tracks are real, and old — early Jurassic, around 200 million years ago, made by therapod dinosaurs walking across what was then a soft mudflat in a coastal floodplain. Local Navajo guides are required by the Tribe to escort visitors to the site (a small tip is expected), and they will sometimes pour water on the tracks to make them stand out, or point out tracks that aren't real and were carved later by enterprising children. Look for both.