Was it too good to be true? Recently, we discussed the findings of University of Utah researchers, who claimed to have discovered a mother lode of dinosaur tracks in the desert on the Arizona-Utah border. The announcement stoked the public’s fantasy of a “dinosaur dance floor,” a prehistoric get-together that left a dense and varied collection of dinosaur footprints and tail drags.

Now, some skeptical paleontologists who examined the site after the announcement have added to the already-lingering doubts: They think the “dinosaur dance floor” is just a bunch of unusual potholes formed from erosion.

One of the skeptics, Brent Breithaupt, director of the University of Wyoming’s Geological Museum, put it bluntly in a press release: “There simply are no tracks or real track-like features at this site.” Ouch.

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In Jurassic times, dinosaurs of every stripe gathered at an oasis surrounded by high sand dunes to drink and perhaps, show off their moves. Geologists from the University of Utah say they’ve identified thousands of dinosaur footprints in an area of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument on the Arizona-Utah border. What was once thought to be a field of strange potholes is now being dubbed a “dinosaur dance floor.”

In a new study [subscription required] published in the paleontology journal Palaios, the researchers argue that the tracks were formed by large animals, not by erosion as previously thought (and some still think). About 190 million years ago, before the continents broke from Pangaea, the site was probably a watering hole in the middle of long stretches of desert that attracted large groups of thirsty dinosaurs. Later, shifting sand dunes covered the area and preserved the prints in sandstone.

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