Flood waters in Texas discovered 15 dinosaur footprints 115 million years ago, researchers say.
The edition was found in Northwest Travis County by volunteers who helped clear up debris from the devastating flood that struck the area in July, the county chief executive, the County Judge Travis told ABC News. Next, on August 5th, paleontologist Matthew Brown confirmed three nail prints, approximately 18-20 inches (46-51 cm) in length.
“Track, a clearly terrifying dinosaur, told CNN that Brown, Brown, director of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Texas.
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According to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the Acrocanthosaurus lived in the early Cretaceous period between 115 and 115 million years ago, and is believed to have been the largest predator in North America at the time. These carnivorous dinosaurs, although T. rex was very tall and heavy, were similar to later Tyrannosaurus Rex, reaching similar lengths.
The tracks are laid out in a pattern of intersections and may have been made by multiple dinosaurs moving together as a group.
“We’re going to go back to these sites and try to document both the old and new tracks,” Brown told Live Science in an email. “There are new and more accurate technologies available to us today than these sites existed in the early 1990s when they were last studied. We can use drones and surface scans to create 3D models of trackways to better understand them.”
Related: A brief history of dinosaurs
Brown hopes that this additional data may tell you more about dinosaurs’ behavior, anatomy, and how they moved.
The Sandy Creek-like waterways where the prints were discovered pass through a rock formation called the Glenrose Formation, about 110 million years ago. “That’s how you know how old a dinosaur truck is,” Brown said. “That is because they are preserved in rock formations.
Travis County is approximately 200 miles (320 km) south of Dinosaurus Valley State Park. It is known for its well preserved dinosaur footprints. Brown said finding dinosaur trucks in central Texas is pretty common.
“Fossilized dinosaur footprints are relatively common in Travis County. In fact, University of Texas researchers have documented tracks in the area in the past, in addition to discovering new tracks along the banks of streams exposed during this historic storm,” he said.
Dinosaurs were now roaming Texas during the Mesozoic Era (252-66 million years ago), but for most of the state’s excavated footprints and fossils (1.44-66 million years ago), the state was covered in soft mud and shallow waters.
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