Hartman Prehistoric Garden

[1] In January 1992 Karen and Dr. Mike Duffin discovered dinosaur footprints in Zilker Park in an old limestone quarry which had recently been cleared for the installation of a butterfly garden.

Dr. Duffin contacted Professor Wann Langston, director emeritus of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory of the Texas Memorial Museum.

The fossils of more than 100 preserved tracks made by six or seven prehistoric reptiles, along with the bones of an ancient turtle were discovered.

The plants chosen to populate the garden were those believed to have existed at the end of the Cretaceous Period (approximately 70 million years BP) when the dinosaurs would have walked through the area, including ferns, horsetails, liverworts, cycads, conifers, ginkgos, as well as magnolias and palms.

[2][3] A life-size bronze sculpture of an Ornithomimus, the species of dinosaur believed to have left the tracks, was designed and sculpted by John Maisano and cast at the Deep in the Heart Art Foundry in Bastrop, Texas.