Sideshow Bob was here

I mention these facts to show how easy it is for one to be led astray, when every possible phase of the subject is not carefully studied. Let us, therefore, attend strictly to detailing facts of observation, and they are sure to lead to a correct solution of all problems within the compass of the human mind. - Unknown author, from "Impressions of Human Feet in Sandstone," Proceedings of the Indiana Historical Society

Fossil footprint fraud isn't anything new. For nearly 200 years (if not longer), people have been modifying the tracks of ancient animals to look like they were made by humans, and the older the rock, the better. Some young earth creationists still try to pass off fakes as ironclad proof that humans walked alongside dinosaurs, but their evidence immediately crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.

Just as there are today, during the 19th century there were a number of reports of fossils that were said to prove fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. During the 1880's, for instance, the paleontologists like O.C. Marsh and Joseph LeConte showed that a trackway interpreted as that of a giant, sandal-wearing human by some was really made by a giant ground sloth. Yet this was a case of confusion rather than fraud. For true counterfeit footprints we'll have to look at some literature produced about 60 years earlier.

During the first half of the 19th century, the English paleontologist Gideon Algernon Mantell published his two-volume work Wonders of Geology, in which the fossils of humans were discussed in addition to the various other shells and bones. The few skeletons Mantell mentioned were certainly of recent origin, but more curious was a pair of footprints discovered in a quarry outside St. Louis, Missouri in 1819. (See illustration above.)

According to a summary by the preparator of the tracks, David Dale Owen, the marks had been cut out and purchased for a man named Frederick Rapp, who displayed them in Harmony, Indiana. It was there that a Mr. Schoolcraft saw them and wrote to The American Journal of Science and Arts to draw attention to the find, although no one could seem to agree on whether they were genuine or manufactured. As an alternate explanation for a natural origin for the tracks, it had been proposed that these were not real tracks at all and had been carved by Native Americans. Contempt for native people caused some to rule this out, however. In Wonders of Geology Mantell argued;

...a little reflection sufficed to show that they were beyond the efforts of those rude children of nature ; since they evinced a skill, and fidelity of execution, which even my distinguished friend, Sir Francis Chantrey, could not have surpassed. No doubt exists in my mind, that these are the actual prints of human feet in soft sand, which was quickly converted into solid rock by the infiltration of calcareous matter, in the manner already described.

Mantell requested that the Yale naturalist Benjamin Silliman investigate the tracks, but it appears that after the initial excitement died down the artificial nature of the tracks became clearer. The example remained in third English (and 1st American) editions of Wonders of Geology, but by the time the 1857 edition came out the example had been excised. (I do not know if Mantell scrapped it in an earlier edition before his death or that this editor removed it for the posthumous reissue.)

Oddly enough, 1857 also saw the issue of an anonymously authored book called Voices from the Rocks; Or, Proofs of the Existence of Man During the Palaeozoic, or Most Ancient Period of the Earth, which featured the tracks as a frontispiece. (They were also mentioned the following year in Cosmongony by "F.G.S.") For this author, the prints "struck at the very root of the whole system of modern Geology," and the text in general offers many of the same examples young earth creationists use today in their further attempts to replace scientific inquiry with dogma. (In fact, some creationists still use the St. Louis tracks as evidence.)

The tracks were certainly not authentic human footprints (If you need evidence of that, print copies of the images and compare them to footprints made by real humans at the beach), yet it appears that they were not entirely manufactured. Although I do not know the exact location from which the slab was found, if it is true that it came from the "Old Red Sandstone" then they are most probably modified dinosaur tracks.

Three-toed dinosaur tracks are abundant in the Triassic-age red sandstone of New England, and it appears that the "human footprint" slab came from similar strata in Missouri. Along with foot impressions, marks made by the metatarsals of dinosaurs have also been found, usually when the animal sat back on its haunches or sat down. If you have a cat handy (click here if not), they may help to visualize how such impressions were made.

When you look at the back leg of your cat, you'll see that their hind limb is constructed differently than ours. There's the part of the leg containing the femur that connects to the hip, the next containing the tibia and fibula, and then another long section that contains the metatarsals. In our species the metatarsals make up the sole of the foot, but in cats they are elongated and make up the lower part of the leg before the toes. Thus cats are walking on their tip-toes all the time, and bipedal dinosaurs had the same type of leg arrangement. You'll note that when your cat sits up, though, the metatarsals are flat against the ground (looking like a long foot), and that it exactly how the natural dinosaur metatarsal tracks from Missouri were made. Some enterprising person must have seen the metatarsal prints, thought them close to the impressions of a human foot (minus the toes), and carved in some toes on the end.

Yet there is something that concerns me about these tracks (which I can only assume are now missing). The original accounts of them state that they were found in limestone below what we now call Carboniferous rock (much older than the Triassic). If this truly was the case, then the tracks are probably entirely carvings, as the tracks in the second illustration included above appear to be. Could there have been two sets of tracks that were later confused? Possibly. Then again it is difficult to determine whether the differences in the woodcuts were due to differences in details or differences in artistic ability. It doesn't seem likely that a Triassic footprint was carved and placed among the limestone, either. That would have stuck out like a sore thumb, and the slab containing the tracks was said to weigh about a ton and contained other fossils.

Either way, it can be safely said that these tracks were not genuine. It may be asked who carved them and why they did so, but given the state of the information at hand I cannot make any conjectures. I don't think this case, as interesting as it may be, merits the effort put into unraveling more famous frauds like Piltdown Man (although journals or family correspondence of the Missouri quarry workers might provide clues about the tracks). Still, there seems to be a relatively rich history of fossils that have found their way into more recent folklore, and the Missouri tracks are just one such example.