Adult dinosaur footprints found after 65 million years

Paleontologists have discovered what they believe to be the first known footprints of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur in southwestern North Dakota, near the Montana border.

The Guardian reports that four connected footprints were found in the area. The new discovery, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is the first known trackway of an adult T. rex, the researchers claim.

The Guardian reports that the footprints were discovered last year on federal land in the Marmarth area near the Montana border in southwestern North Dakota.

Each footprint is about 3 feet (0.9 meters) long. The distance from one footprint to the next is about 13 feet (4 meters). By analyzing the size and structure of the footprints, researchers have identified them as those of an adult T-Rex (dinosaur).

Previously, only two confirmed footprints of an adult T. rex had been found in the world—one in New Mexico and the other in Montana. But they were isolated, so they didn't provide much information about how the animal moved.

"Bones provide a lot of information about an animal, but footprints capture a moment in its behavior," said Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

And if there is a sequence of multiple prints, it is possible to follow how the animal was moving.

Researchers have created a detailed record of the footprints using high-resolution 3D scanning technology, which has enabled them to be digitally analyzed and replicated without destroying the original footprints.

The researchers also got an idea of ​​the T-Rex's speed from the footprints. According to their calculations, the animal was moving at a speed of about 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour. That is, close to the speed of a fast human walk. The researchers believe that the T-Rex was walking, not running.

However, they also cautioned that this calculation of speed is not entirely accurate, as the footprints have changed slightly due to weathering and erosion over billions of years.

Researchers plan to recover three of the four footprints and take them to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science by helicopter, where they will be preserved and further studied.

Dinosaurs roamed the Earth between 66 and 68 million years ago. They were one of the world's top predators during the late Cretaceous period and were one of the last non-avian dinosaurs to survive before the extinction of the dinosaurs. An adult T-Rex would have been about 12 to 13 feet tall at the hip.