Underwater Animal Tracks - Protofossil Factories

Animal tracks can be found around water sources. Such is the case with these Canada geese and deer tracks through backwaters of the Cedar River at Palisades-Kepler State Park near Mount Vernon, Iowa. Given the right weather, geologic conditions and time these now watery tracks could become hardened fossil tracks. However, even in drought times that eastern Iowa has experienced in 2012 it is unlikely that these tracks will survive intact following the next rainfall let alone the eons of time. But somehow fossil tracks do show up in the geologic record. We shall see.