Matching sets of footprints discovered in Africa and South America reveal that dinosaurs once traveled along a type of highway 120 million years ago before the two continents split apart, according to new research. Paleontologists have found more than 260 dinosaur footprints from the Early Cretaceous Period in Brazil and Cameroon, now more than 3,700 miles apart on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The footprints are similar in age, shape and geologic context, said Louis L.
Jacobs, a paleontologist at the Southern Methodist University in Texas and lead author of a study describing the tracks published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science . Red stars within this graphic mark the route once taken by dinosaurs when the South American and African continents were connected. Most of the fossilized prints were created by three-toed theropod dinosaurs, while a few likely belonged to lumbering four-legged sauropods with long necks and tails or ornithischians, which had pelvic structures similar to birds, said study coauthor Diana P.
Vineyard, research associate at SMU. The trackways tell a story of how the movements of massive landmasses created ideal conditions for dinosaurs before supercontinents broke apart into the seven continents we know today. The footprints were preserved in mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes that once existed on the supercontinent Gondwana, which broke away from the larger landmass of Pangea, Jacobs said.
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