A squad of palaeontologist has identified over 260 dinosaur footprints in South America and Africa that match up , neatly showing how the continents were once joined at the hip .
The step were of alike age , about 120 million age old , and were urge into mud and silt of ancient riverbanks and lakeshores . Most of the mark — also known as trace fogey , since they are just a trace of the animals that made them — were created by bird-footed dinosaur , a chemical group of bipedal , three - toed carnivorous dinosaurs . Some of the most famous dinosaur include in the sets were theropods likeTyrannosaurus rexandAllosaurus . Other tracks included hundred of print belonging to sauropods ( think self-aggrandizing boys likeBrontosaurus ) and ornithischian dinosaurs , so - make for their shuttle - similar rose hip bones .
The tracks were made on land that is now part of Brazil and Cameroon , two country divide by over 3,000 miles ( 4,828 klick ) of ocean . Back then , the acres was part of the Gondwana supercontinent . The tracks in Brazil were found in the Sousa Basin , the region of eastern Brazil that fits neatly into the African coastline along the Gulf of Guinea , as many of us were thrilled to disclose as kids . The data track in Brazil are over 3,700 Swedish mile ( 6,000 klick ) from the Cameroonian tracks , but show that populations of dinosaurs were roaming across the two when they were still joined .
Theropod tracks from northern Cameroon.Photo: SMU
“ One of the unseasoned and narrowest geologic connective between Africa and South America was the elbow joint of northeast Brazil nestled against what is now the sea-coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea , ” say Louis Jacobs , a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University and lead author of the study , in a Southern Methodist Universityrelease . “ The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch , so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it . ” Gizmodo was unable to get at a copy of the paper , bring out by theNew Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science .
Trace fossils oftenreveal details of dinosaur lifethat can not be learn from the animals ’ fossilized pearl . Trace fossil are n’t just footprint ; they can be scat singing ( poop ) , nests , and any other vestiges of dinosaur ’ relationship with their environment . In 2021 , a different squad of paleontologistscalculated the speed of a dinosaurbased on the footprint it left behind and found the beast could move at nearly 28 miles per 60 minutes , about as tight as the earth ’s fast humans .
It ’s passably wild to think that these ancient wildcat once tramp freely across lands that are now separated by oceans . These footprint are like echoes from a time when the world ’s land masses were more connected , and dinosaurs were the unchallenged rulers of the land .
dinosaurstrace fossils
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