Stanford, a 69-year-old Texan, has been combing Maryland stream beds for evidence of dinosaurs for the past 13 years. The result is an unprecedented collection of footprints that were left behind 112 million years ago -- found in an area where none had been reported before.
Stanford is about the furthest thing possible from a conventional scientist, and his lack of formal training -- he has a high school diploma -- is just the start. His first passion, one he still pursues, is UFOs; "anomalous aerial objects" is the term he prefers. Dinosaur tracking was just something he happened on. As it turned out, he has a knack for it.
Stanford has found hundreds of tracks in the suburbs of Washington and Baltimore. They reveal an extraordinary diversity of animals living in one place during the early Cretaceous period -- about twice the variety previously seen from that geological period. And he has found the fossilized remains of what he and a Johns Hopkins University paleontologist believe is a previously unknown species, a discovery he lovingly refers to as "Cretaceous roadkill."
Read on for Stanford's pertinent comments on scientific investigation, UFOs and the sad state of "ufology."
1 comment:
"...If you want real data, you go out with real instru- ments and attempt to get it. And if you do get it, you analyze it and publish it under peer review," he said.
Good advice, and useful, to do basic field work.
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