Quick Fact

The discovery site was less than one acre, yet the proposed monument is about 5,300 acres

What the Bill Says
Section 4 (b) states:

there is established the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument in the State of New Mexico. (b) Description of Land- The Monument shall consist of approximately 5,280 acres of public land in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, as generally depicted on the map entitled `Prehistoric Trackways National Monument' and dated January 25, 2007.

This is over 230 million square feet!
The discovery site was about 1000 square feet!

So what is the justification for this massive land grab?

The 1994 Smithsonian report listed 34 other localities where tracks were supposed to be found. Although a few of these sites, such as Insect Hill, were studied by independent scientists, there is no evidence that anyone independent of the monument proponents have visited every one of these sites.

BLM personnel have not even visited more than a half a dozen of them as of the end of 2006.

Section 3 (1) of the bill tries to justify the huge area:

So, this is a Megatrackway. Well,  a MEGAtrackway would certainly require millions of square feet just by the sound of it.

What Is A Megatracksite?

In the computer world, mega means millions.

In the real world, mega usually means big, or large, or huge, or gigantic, or colossal.

Since we are not talking about computers here, we must conclude that megatrackway means big, or large, or huge, or gigantic, or colossal (or maybe both definitions apply).

An article titled A brief history of dinosaur paleobiology, by Michael J. Benton defines a megatracksite. The third paragraph under the heading "Dinosaur finds since 1970s" states:

A third new area of research in North America has been the study of dinosaur footprints, and especially megatrackways. These are sites, often extending over tens or hundreds of kilometres, covered with dinosaur tracks. Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado has shown that there are Late Jurassic and Cretaceous horizons that can be traced along the western shore of the Mid-American Seaway, where great herds of dinosaurs (especially sauropods and ornithopods) hiked from north to south, perhaps migrating 1000-3000 km each year as climates and food sources changed.

Pay attention to the name Lockley here

The Moab Megatracksite
This Internet article has another similar definition of a megatracksite where it talks about the Moab Megatracksite in Moab, UT:

The upper boundary of the Entrada is associated with the earliest known "megatracksite." A megatracksite is any tracksite which is laterally extensive and rich in trackways. Such tracksites tend to be associated with depositional unconformities. Tracks are known at this particular boundary from about 30 seperate sites, extending over an area of approximately 1000km2 (Lockley and Hunt, 1995, p. 155). From one major site near Moab, referred to as the "Stomping Ground," approximately 2300 tracks are present in an area of about 2 acres. Estimates suggest that there are literally billions of tracks at this boundary. Lockley and Hunt (p. 157)

Pay special attention here folks. Look at the authors of this article. These are people intimately tied to promoting this monument.

In the 1999 book Dinosaur Tracks By Martin G. Lockley, Adrian P. Hunt (the same two authors cited above), Mr. Lockley makes the following statement in the preface, xiv

"More than once I have stood on an ancient surface awed by the realization that it had been trampled for miles in every direction. My colleagues and I dubbed such layers “megatracksites”."

OOPS, it seems that those most closely tied to promoting the national monument were the ones that coined the term megatracksite that is used in the bill. How quaint.

But wait, there is more, the original definition implied tracks for "miles in every direction". The Robledo tracksite only produced one significant site of about 1000 square feet and yet it is called a megatracksite.

How is this?

Well, when you were the one that originally defined the term, you decide that you have the right to re-define it.

In another article by the same two authors and others, they re-define megatracksite to fit the Robledo Mountains,

MEGATRACKSITE

Lucas et al. (1995b) demonstrated that the majority of the Robledo tracksites occur at one stratigraphic level over an area of 20 km² and thus constitute a megatracksite (sensu Lockley, 1991). The Robledo Mountains megatracksite is unique for a number of reasons: (1) it is the only pre-Middle Jurassic megatracksite: (2) it is the only megatracksite to include abundant invertebrate trails; (3) it has a much more diverse tetrapod ichnofauna than any other megatracksite; (4) it is the only megatracksite to be dominated by small (<20 cm pes impression length) tetrapod tracks; (5) it is the only megatracksite to occur in redbeds; and (6) it is the only megatracksite not to include dinosaur footprints.[3]

Megatracksites Around The World

15e. The Morrison Formation (Jurassic)

Distribution of the Morrison Formation. From the Town of Morrison Server.

The Morrison Formation is laterally very extensive (about 1 million km2), and has been found over a large area of the western states, including South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas and Oklahoma. The Morrison contains massive amounts of dinosaur fossils, and has been described as a bone yard. Several members are recognized, the most prominent being the Salt Wash member, the Recapture Shale Member, the Westwater Canyon Sandstone Member, and the Brushy Basin Shale Member. Along the west side of Dinosaur Ridge, the Morrison Formation is 280 to 320 feet thick. In the area of Arches National Park, the Morrison is approximately 600ft thick. Layers of volcanic ash just above the formation have been radiometrically dated to 147 million years (Chronic, 1990, p. 90).

There is abundant evidence that the Morrison deposits are continental, lake and stream deposits, rather than open marine deposits. Some of the thin limestone beds contain abundant charophyte fossils, a type of algae that lives only in fresh-water lakes (Baar, p. 184). The Morrison preserves well-developed paleosols, complete with: abundant carbonate nodules (Turner and Peterson, 1998), "pseudo-microkarst and microkarst features with vadose and internal sediment fills; root traces, columnar and stacked rhizoconcretions, and Microcodium; circumgranular, desiccation, horizontal, and septarian cracks; brecciation and grainification; and rare blackened pebbles" (Dunagan, p. 24). Some sections also contain bedded gypsum. Lastly, the Morrison is unconformable with the strata above and below it (Morales, p. 247).

The Morrison Formation is certainly one of the more interesting formations in terms of its fossil content. Over much of that area, it has yielded a rich trove of dinosaur fossils, beginning with dinosaur discoveries made near Morrison in 1877. These include several species of Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, Seismosaurus, Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Camarasaurus, Camptisaurus, Ornitholestes, and others. Other fossils include crocodiles, lizards, frogs, tiny primitive mammals, freshwater clams, fish, ferns, trees, and even large termite nests [see also: Termite tenacity]! The termite nests are especially interesting significant, since they are apparently presrved in situ, and would have been destroyed by flood conditions.

Tracks are found in the Morrison at least thirty locations (Lockley and Hunt, p. 164), and include those of sauropods, theropods, some ornithisicians, pterosaurs, bird-like theropod, and possibly the only known stegosaur track. Whereas underlying formations of the San Rafael are dominated by small and medium theropods tracks, with a small precentage of sauropods, the Morrison track fauna contain numerous tracks of large sauropods, a smaller proportion but a wider variety of theropod tracks, and a wider size range of ornithopod tracks. The largest sauropod tracks are nearly 1 meter long. The smallest tracks Lockley and Hunt note that dinosaur fossils in the Morrison "are preserved at the base of river channel deposits or in fossil soils where tracks are rarely found, whereas some of the best tracks occur along the shores of alkaline lakes or at the top of river channel sequences where bones are not usually found" (p. 177).

SOURCE: http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/grand2b.htm

Texas megatracksite
This site shows some megatracks at a secret location in Texas.

Australia Megatracksite

An 80-kilometre "dinosaur trackway" in the Kimberley region of Western Australia is a scientific treasure, unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

The thousands of fossilised footprints were left by at least a dozen species of dinosaurs which lived 115 to 120 million years ago. They represent the largest number of footprints, the greatest diversity of dinosaur types and the best footprint preservation ever found, says Italian dinosaur expert Dr Giuseppe Leonardi.

Since the trackway was first scientifically studied in 1991, the three researchers have mapped, photographed and analysed "assemblages" of footprints, many superimposed one over the other as different animals walked over the same ground.

The footprints range in size from micro-tracks a few centimetres long to mega-prints nearly a metre in length.

They reveal that the main groups of dinosaurs all roamed the region, which stretches north and south of Broome: theropods, sauropods, ankylosaurs, ornithopods and stegosaurs.

Although there were earlier reports of isolated footprints, the remarkable scope of the trackway was first observed during a 1991 fossil hunt organised by Dr John Long of the Western Australian Museum in Perth. The 40-member team included Dr Long, Dr Thulborn, and palaeontologists from the museum, the University of Queensland, and La Trobe University in Melbourne.

SOURCE: http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/meet_the_dinos/ozdino2.htm

Middle Jurassic (Bajocian and Bathonian) Dinosaur Megatracksites, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, U.S.A

Two previously unknown rare Middle Jurassic dinosaur megatracksites are reported from the Bighorn Basin of northern Wyoming in the Western Interior of the United States. These trace fossils occur in carbonate units once thought to be totally marine in origin, and constitute the two most extensive Middle Jurassic dinosaur tracksites currently known in North America.

The Sundance track-bearing surface locally covers 7.5 square kilometers in the vicinity of Shell, Wyoming. Other tracks occur apparently on the same horizon approximately 25 kilometers to the west, north of the town of Greybull. The Gypsum Spring megatracksite is locally preserved across the same 25 kilometer east-west expanse, with the Gypsum Spring megatracksite more extensive in a north-south direction with tracks occurring locally across a 100 kilometer extent. Conservative estimates for the trackway density based on regional mapping in the Sundance tracksite discovery area near Shell suggests that over 150,000 in situ tracks may be preserved per square kilometer in the Sundance Formation in this area. Comparable estimates have not been made for other areas.

Similarities between the two megatracksites include their formation and preservation in upper intertidal to supratidal sediments deposited under at least seasonally arid conditions.

SOURCE:

http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1669%2F0883-1351(2001)016%3C0233%3AMJBABD%3E2.0.CO%3B2

The 1994 Smithsonian report only looked at the discovery site which is only about 1000 square feet. Nothing else of significance has been found at the discovery site or anywhere else within the proposed monument boundaries, period.

This is just a huge scam and rip off of taxpayer money to try and create a national monument through excavation - hoping that something significant will be found.

Bottom line - these track are not unique to the Robledo Mountains