Pre-dinosaur print near North Rim
Reptile tracks predate Grand Canyon by 200M-plus years
Long before the Grand Canyon formed, a primitive reptile the size of a baby alligator skittered sideways across the wet sand of an impossibly ancient coastal plain.
Then came roughly 315 million years of evolution, extinction and other natural forces, which led inevitably to Steve Rowland.
The UNLV geology professor recently identified fossilized tracks from that long-gone reptile on a fallen slab of rock along one of Grand Canyon National Park’s best-known trails.
The 28 footprints run diagonally across a salmon-colored boulder perched on the edge of Bright Angel Trail, less than 3 miles from the parking lot on the North Rim.
“They’re the oldest vertebrate tracks in the Grand Canyon,” Rowland said.
He got his first look at them last year, during a family vacation to the iconic park 280 miles east of Las Vegas.
Rowland said he made a special trip down the trail after hearing about the markings from Allan Krill, an old friend and fellow geologist from Norway who noticed them while hiking in the canyon in the spring of 2016.
“It turned out to be quite extraordinary,” he said.
Near as he can tell from searching the scientific literature, this marks the first time fossils have been documented in this particular rock formation.
DINOSAUR
The Retail Association of Nevada predicts 1.6 million Nevadans will shop or think about shopping between Thursday and Monday. The association predicts up to $562 million will be spent across the state during that time, a nearly 6 percent increase year over year.
Training new employees
Porter happened upon J.C. Penney’s job fair Oct. 16 when she walked into the Henderson store to shop that day.
About a week later, she sat at orientation in the employees’ break room, steps away from where interviewers quizzed candidates on how they’d react to shoppers’ questions.
Porter’s orientation group included five other women who hoped to turn seasonal jobs into something more. Among them was Brianna Diaz, a Basic Academy student at her first job, and a mother of seven in her
30s who’d returned to the workforce after she almost died from diabetes complications.
They came ready to work.
“I’ll take any time,” Porter told the orientation leader. “I’m bored just staying at home.”
In the course of about six hours spread over two days, the leader, Mark Schoenfeldt, taught the temporary workers the computer system, the company history. More important, he taught them the company’s culture and how it does business. Schoenfeldt chose to lead every orientation; an employee on the floor
without a grasp of Penney’s mission could be hard to retrain.
The trainees watched videos on how to interact with customers and report harassment. They played a J.C. Penney-designed board game with cards quizzing the seasonal workers on how to help customers in different scenarios.
As part of their training, the seasonal workers spent two four-hour shifts shadowing a veteran employee.
Schoenfeldt emphasized some key goals this holiday season. Tell customers about items sold under J.C. Penney brand names, like Arizona and athletic brand Xersion. Tell customers about the cellphone app. Tell customers about the company-branded credit card.