(left: Gallimimus, © 1998 by Shannon S. Yeager.)

I hasten to clarify. In the common parlance of Quechua-speaking peoples, plurals are stressed by repeating the word. The name of the town of Torotoro would thus be translated 'Bulls'. This highland community is in the northern part of the Department of Potosi, Bolivia, most easily reached by road from the city of Cochabamba. It still takes 4x4s to cross the unbridged River Caine (headwaters of the Rio Grande). The dirt and rock road climbs a steep mountainside before reaching the overlook to take in the broad valley with the town nestled at the southern end and the Humajalanta Caverns in the hills that shadow the Caine to the north.

It is highly probable that at the arrival of the Europeans the inhabitants of the valley were much impressed with male bovines, which puts them on a par with the Minoan civilization. Little did they know that their out-of-the-way corner of the world would become one of Bolivia's first National Parks for entirely different antecedents.

For reasons of paleogeography the Bolivian Andean Mountains do not have a large amount of limestone. The Torotoro area is a rarity, having both late Paleozoic and Cretaceous calcitic deposits which have preserved coeval fossils and favored the scouring of a cave with some noteworthy formations.

My visit to Torotoro preceded the national decree that created the Park, but I was drawn because the fossils were already a byword among the cognoscenti. As soon as we arrived in town we were waylaid by underaged peddlers pushing magnificent "condores" -- Permian Neospirifer condor -- along with the offer to escort us to "los dinosaurios". As yet there have been no significant dinosaur bones discovered in Bolivia, however, the tracks at Torotoro are world class.

Beautiful spirifers and productids leach out of hills a thousand feet above the town, but as we trekked to the cave we could see that the surface of the valley itself is made up of a limey rock etched with an occasional tridactylic impression. In correspondence with Richard Chandler, editor of Janus of the North Carolina Fossil Club, I also was to learn that Torotoro is the type locality for yet a different animal. In a letter he informed me, "There is a very unusual species, Pucapristis branisi, which is found only in the El Molino Formation at Torotoro."

The best accumulation of tracks for both professionals and amateurs clusters about the little stream bed coursing just out of town. Erosion has worked its way through several layers of strata. Whenever the sediments were being deposited a succession of soft marls was capped with hard cemented limestone. On each layer stepping out of the stream there were clear three-toed impressions as if a giant ostrich walked up from one ledge to the next. Some paces away the theropod prints were overmarked by the solidified mementos of some four elephant-like strides of the ponderous sauropods. To the uninitiated they seemed to be trudging up an incline; obviously, the imprints were made in a horizontal muddy field which was later tilted by tectonic action.

Many renowned track systems have been discovered in quarries as rock removal has turned up new layers or hidden formations. One of these has very recently been brought to public attention through the excavations of a cement factory on the outskirts of the city of Sucre, Bolivia. As the raw material was fed into the maw of the oven the bulldozers worked away exposing a wall of material with a high magnesium content unsuited for the finished product. That was a real 'lifesaver' for the tracks.

My interest in fossils availed me of the opportunity to have a personal tour of the scarp. The management of the factory kindly gave permission for my entrance and provided an enthusiastic guide. He had once been through the Smithsonian Museum, so he could generally make a good presentation. He pointed to a row of small prints; "I think these must have been made by a small animal like a glyptodont, and look at those claw marks; could those have been made by the giant cave bear?" Well, No. Glyptodonts and bears, whether giants or otherwise, were mammals, hence not candidates to accompany dinosaurs in the Cretaceous. I trust he was sufficiently understanding not to pawn off similar misconceptions to the next VIP.

It would take a careful inventory to count the number of prints across the vast expanse of the cliff wall. The diagnosis of the variety of animals contributing to the impressions would also take the kind of analysis even with ladders for a close-up that was not possible in our case. Furthermore, as the pictures indicate, the original mud preservation was not as clear-cut as in the Torotoro outcropping, even though the numbers and varieties were much greater.