A Flood Revealed 115 Million-Yr-Previous Footprints of a T. Rex Wannabe

“The tracks that are unambiguously dinosaurs were left by meat-eating dinosaurs similar to Acrocanthosaurus, a roughly 35-foot-long bipedal carnivore,” Matthew Brown—a paleontologist on the University of Texas at Austin—told CNN.

Acrocanthosaurus means “high-spined lizard,” although the species can be nicknamed “Acro” and “terror of the South.” While Acrocanthosaurus could resemble the Tyrannosaurus to an untrained eye, the 2 species are genetically unrelated and have many distinct variations. Acrocanthosaurus are barely smaller than T. rex with slender, much less muscular heads. Their limb proportions are virtually the precise reverse of the T. rex, with longer forelimbs and shorter hind legs. Perhaps the obvious distinction between the species, Acrocanthosaurus are sadly lesser-known dinosaurs as solely a handful of skeletons have been found.

While discovering Acrocanthosaurus stays could also be uncommon, discovering dinosaur footprints isn’t—in truth, it’s extra widespread in Texas than you’ll assume, in keeping with Brown.

“We have a lot of dinosaur footprints around Texas in different areas,” he mentioned to CNN. “Just picturing what used to roam in this area is fascinating exercise.”

Other dinosaurs that lived in what’s now modern-day Texas embrace Iguanodons, Pleurocoelus, and Technosaurus. The footprints discovered after the floods date again over 100 million years, which means the dinosaur who left them lived throughout the Cretaceous interval—an period that started with the Earth’s land dividing into two continents. During this time, the local weather would’ve been hotter and extra humid than it’s at this time, probably due to excessive volcanic exercise. Texas would have been lined by an inland sea that break up North America in two—a far cry from the state we all know at this time.

To shield the tracks from injury, Brown and his staff have been advising native cleanup crews.

“We’ve been talking with the environmental monitoring company too about sensitive locations that they’ve gotten from the state and what to watch out for … basically, to make sure that they’re not rolling heavy equipment across the trackways,” he instructed CNN.

In the long run, researchers hope to study whether or not the recently-discovered footprints have been left by a single dinosaur or a gaggle roaming the land. Brown additionally mentioned his staff hopes to return to the land to document the tracks with 3D imaging.

Emma Frederickson is a Pace University pupil by day, journalist by night time. She enjoys overlaying something from popular culture to science to meals. Her work seems in a number of publications together with Biography.com and Popular Mechanics. When she’s not writing, Emma will be discovered hopping between espresso outlets on the hunt for the world’s finest oat milk cappuccino.