Casting a dinosaur trackway from the Bendricks, Barry, South Wales, U.K

The Bendricks, just to the east of Barry, South Wales, is the only known Upper Triassic dinosaur footprint site in Britain and the most extensive trackway site in the country. Prior to 1996 all the trackways discovered both at the Bendricks and elsewhere in South Wales, were of animals walking with a bipedal gait but in the autumn of that year a quadrupedal trackway was found on the surface of a fallen block at the eastern end of the section, below high tide level. Due to the thickness of the bed in which the quadruped trackway was preserved, and the problems that cutting and storing large slabs of footprints pose, the decision was taken to attempt to take a mould of the trackway in situ from which one or more permanent casts could be made. The cast was taken between tides using a silicone rubber with a very fast catalyst.