Kent Hups’ path through life took him from jobs as a Commerce City police officer and postal worker back to college so he could share his passion for paleontology as a teacher.
His path then led him to Denver’s struggling but determined Manual High School and, on March 29, to a pile of rocks on an ancient floodplain outside Grand Junction.
Hups discovered the first-known track of a Jurassic Period ankylosaur that day — well-preserved and at least 30 million years older than the footprints left behind by other armored dinosaurs.
The track, made by a beast about 25 feet long and 4 feet high, also shows ankylosaurs were much bigger in the Jurassic than previously thought.
Discoveries such as this “keep science going,” Hups said Wednesday. “This shows there are things that are going to blow your mind when we find them.”
Ankylosaurs — relatives of Colorado’s state fossil, the stegosaur — were plant-eating tanks with broad, triangular heads, spikes and heavy, clublike tails. They were known as “the dreadnoughts of the dinosaurian world.”
“This is not just any ‘old’ footprint,” said Martin Lockley, a dinosaur track expert at the University of Colorado Denver. “This is the first and only ankylosaur footprint ever found in the Jurassic anywhere in the world. . . . A lot of us are excited.”
Lockley said not only are dinosaur tracks rare, those made by ankylosaurs “are horribly elusive. They may not have been in areas where there was mud for them to step in.”
A few ankylosaur tracks have been found in rocks from the Cretaceous Period and have been dated to 100 million to 120 million years old.
Hups’ track — measuring 9 inches by 12 inches — was uncovered in what was once a floodplain with ashy, volcanic deposits and is likely about 150 million years old.
Hups, 50, who teaches earth science, said he’s found numerous dinosaur bones, including the most-complete ankylosaur skeleton in the same area. But the track is his most significant discovery.
“I was waiting for a cast to dry, so I started turning over rocks, and I saw this one track that was neat-looking, really neat,” Hups said.
Students in Hups’ earth science class at Manual helped to clean the track, making molds for replicas that will be displayed at Manual, UC Denver and the Museum of Western Colorado.
The original will go to the Bureau of Land Management repository in Cañon City. It was collected on a BLM permit.
“It’s cool, really cool,” said 15-year-old Victoria Trujillo, a Manual student.
That’s exactly the kind of scientific enthusiasm that Hups hoped to hear when he signed on last fall to teach at Manual.
“We’re making a difference,” he said of Manual, which reopened last fall after being closed in 2006 to rebuild academically. “We can change the way things are happening . . .
“I took a big pay cut to teach, but it’s the greatest decision I’ve ever made,” Hups said.
Ann Schrader: 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com
