Moenave dinosaurs

Don't believe everything you may see on the Internet. Don't necessarily believe what your guide may tell you. But do yourself a favour and stop by the Moenave dinosaur site if you find yourself in this part of the world. 

You will not see fossilised dinosaur bones. These are interesting erosion patterns, not skeletal remains.

You will not see dinosaur eggs, or dinosaur poop. These are concretions—fascinating in their own right, but nothing to do with dinosaurs.

What you will see on this windswept spot south of Moenave, Arizona, and west of Tuba City—especially if you're lucky enough to arrive shortly after a rain—are dinosaur tracks. Legitimate dinosaur tracks, left by bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs crossing muddy ground and hardened into stone soon thereafter.

This is Jurassic rock, not Cretaceous, so disregard anything you may read or be told about T. rex, or Velociraptor. But Dilophosaurus is a real possibility; the time period and size are right, and skeletal fossils have been recovered not too far from here. You probably remember Dilophosaurus: "Play fetch? Play fetch? Look, stick! See the stick? See the stick? Yeah, yeah, look, look stick! Look stick! Stick, stupid. Fetch the stick, boy! You don't like the stick? Ah, no wonder you're extinct."

["I'm gonna run you over when I come back down."]

Dilophosaurus or not—there are other plausible candidates, and it's not possible to be certain—you are walking where dinosaurs walked. And that...that is just cool.

So tip your guide a tenner, or a twenty if you can spare it, and thank him for showing you around the site. Even if his palaeontological savvy is nil. It's the polite thing to do, and the local economy depends largely on such small injections of cash. Come to think of it, maybe buy some jewelry if they're set up—you're sure to find something nice, for less than you would pay at a trading post. (Always buy direct if you can.) And on your way back out to the highway, be alert: if you know what you're looking for, you just might see...

Actual dinosaurs.