Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
Extreme floods in Texas revealed 15 dinosaur footprints dating back 115 million years.
Experts say the footprints are similar to that of the Acrocanthosaurus—a 35-foot-long carnivorous dinosaur.
Acrocanthosaurus were one of many dinosaurs that lived in Texas during the Cretaceous period, though the area looked completely different than it does today.
In early July, devastating floods struck Texas, destroying homes, roads, and other infrastructure in their wake. While clearing debris, a group of volunteers found something incredible: dinosaur footprints that date back millions of years. Even more exciting, the volunteers didn’t just find a couple prints—they found 15.
The prints were found in northwest Travis County, near Austin. Researchers said that the three-clawed footprints measure between 18 and 20 inches long. Using the rock layer the tracks were preserved in, experts estimated that the dinosaurs who left the footprints lived around 115 million years ago.
“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 at the University of Texas at Austin—told CNN.
Acrocanthosaurus means “high-spined lizard,” though the species is also nicknamed “Acro” and “terror of the South.” While Acrocanthosaurus may resemble the Tyrannosaurus to an untrained eye, the two species are genetically unrelated and have many distinct differences. Acrocanthosaurus are slightly smaller than T. rex with narrow, less muscular heads. Their limb proportions are almost the exact opposite of the T. rex, with longer forelimbs and shorter hind legs. Perhaps the most obvious difference between the species, Acrocanthosaurus are unfortunately lesser-known dinosaurs as only a handful of skeletons have been discovered.
While finding Acrocanthosaurus remains may be rare, finding dinosaur footprints isn’t—in fact, it’s more common in Texas than you would think, according to Brown.
“We have a lot of dinosaur footprints around Texas in different areas,” he said to CNN. “Just picturing what used to roam in this area is fascinating exercise.”
Other dinosaurs that lived in what is now modern-day Texas include Iguanodons, Pleurocoelus, and Technosaurus. The footprints found after the floods date back over 100 million years, meaning the dinosaur who left them lived during the Cretaceous period—an era that began with the Earth’s land dividing into two continents. During this time, the climate would’ve been warmer and more humid than it is today, likely because of high volcanic activity. Texas would have been covered by an inland sea that split North America in two—a far cry from the state we know today.
To protect the tracks from damage, Brown and his team have been advising local 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 told CNN.
In the future, researchers hope to learn whether the recently-discovered footprints were left by a single dinosaur or a group roaming the land. Brown also said his team hopes to return to the land to record the tracks with 3D imaging.
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