Who he is
A self-taught fossil hunter from Las Cruces, New Mexico. The scientists who wrote the monument's book call him a dedicated citizen scientist.
The 1987 hike
In 1987, hiking alone in the Robledo Mountains just northwest of Las Cruces, he found rock full of fossil footprints about 280 million years old. Between 1987 and 2010 he collected most of the more than 700 slabs of footprints now at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque.
A monument
Fossil footprints had been known in these hills since the 1930s. His finds brought them national and international attention. In 2009, an act of Congress made 5,280 acres of the hills the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument.