TMU Students Discover First Mammalian Footprint Fossil At Vasquez Rocks
During an outing in September, a geology professor and some students from The Master's University (TMU) uncovered something quite remarkable in the famed Vasquez Rocks just northeast of Santa Clarita.
In September, TMU students and alumni presented seven research abstracts to the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Anaheim, California. GSA is an international academic conference representing the earth sciences.
However, one presentation garnered more attention. "Doggy Go Walkies" was a TMU research project on a fossil footprint found at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area.
"I took students out to Vasquez Rocks for an Essentials of Geology lab. A couple of students were pointing at mud cracks and we looked down and there was a tiny footprint. We didn't know it at the time, but this was the first fossil footprint ever found in the park," said Dr. Matthew McLain, Dean of the School of Science, Math, Technology & Health and associate professor of biology and geology, in an for TMU .
According to Dr. McLain, the 30-to-15 million-year-old footprints were from a hesperocyontine , a small carnivore that is now extinct but distantly related to North American canines.
"It's cool to know, of course, what kind of animals were walking around here in the past. We've got a few tracks on the same surface, and so that's exciting to learn a little bit about what animals were doing in the past out here, and we're hoping to go and find some more tracks in that area, because there should be animals like camels walking around. There's some other things you would expect to find. And so it's just giving us a window into the past world that California had," Dr. McLain said.
Since TMU is a Christian-based school, McLain wanted to highlight that science and faith can coexist together, especially when making discoveries like this.
"People have that, 'oh, if you're a person of faith, and if you're a religious person, you can't do science,' or somehow you don't trust science, or don't believe in science. I'm out here doing science, doing paleontology," Dr. McLain said. "When we actually deal with science, what we realize is that we're not anti-science. We believe that there's a reason for why we have science and why nature makes sense, and why we can study it – because there's a God."
