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In that sense, the trample surface is not "just a wet pond," but "it's possibly a record of global climate change" a shift from drier to wetter conditions, Chan says.

She says the traditional view is that the Navajo Sandstone represents "a vast, dry uninhabitable desert. But now we are seeing there are a lot of variations, and there were periods when dinosaurs were living there."

Seiler envisions the dinosaurs were "happy to be at this place, having wandered up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand, relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water."

The trample surface "helps paint a picture of what it was like to live back then," he says. "Tracks tell us what the dinosaurs were doing, what their behavior was, what life was like for them, what they did on a day-to-day basis."

After the dinosaurs left their prints, the trample surface was covered by shifting dunes, which eventually became Navajo Sandstone. Then, the rock slowly eroded away, exposing the tracks. The tracks eventually will erode too, Seiler says.

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