Scientists studying an ancient shoreline in Bolivia have identified and catalogued over 16,000 dinosaur tracks, setting a new world record for the number of individual dinosaur footprint fossils at a single site.
The recent unprecedented documentation of ancient reptilian footprints also sets single-site world records for continuous trackways, tail traces, and swimming traces.
The Geoscience Research Institute-led research team said that most of the tracks appear to be aligned in a northwest-to-southeast direction, suggesting the dinosaurs were wandering along the ancient South American shoreline. The alignment of the dinosaur tracks also suggested some of the extinct reptiles may have traveled in groups as they traversed the ancient landscape.
According to a statement detailing the world record undertaking, Bolivia is a favorite spot for scientists to study its collection of fossilized dinosaur tracks. In the best cases, documenting these multi-million-year-old footprints can offer unique insights into how these ancient land animals moved and behaved. However, the research team notes that most such sites remain unpublished in mainstream science journals, leaving an unnecessary gap in knowledge of dinosaur behavior.
In the latest effort to map and preserve thousands of dinosaur footprints in Bolivia, Raul Esperante from the Geoscience Research Institute and colleagues visited the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Torotoro National Park. During their field research, the team visited and catalogued dinosaur tracks at nine study sites.
After collecting and cataloguing measurements and images of the footprints, the team determined they had documented over 16,000 tracks. The smallest therapod dinosaur footprint was less than 10 cm. At over 30 cm, the largest of the tracks was over three times the size of the smallest.
Identifiable by their footprint shape, these ancient tracks were left near the end of the Cretaceous period by three-toed theropod dinosaurs.
“It’s amazing working at this site, because everywhere you look, the ground is covered in dinosaur tracks,” the study authors write.
A detailed analysis of dinosaur footprints as a collective, rather than individually, revealed several new insights into individual and group behaviors. According to the study authors, the behaviors deduced from the tracks included running, swimming, and tail dragging. There was also evidence of sharp turns in the ancient shoreline, suggesting high agility among the theropods.
As noted, the over 16,000 dinosaur tracks were all roughly oriented in a northwest-southeast direction. The research team said this generally uniform directionality was consistent with ancient ripple marks preserved in the ancient sediment layer, “suggesting these dinosaurs were roaming alongside the ancient shoreline.”
Along with setting several world records, the study authors deduced that the ancient coastline was a “high traffic area.” The parallel orientation of several footprint ‘groups’ suggested that several of the ancient theropod dinosaurs were traveling together rather than independently.
“This site is a stunning window into this area’s past. Not just how many dinosaurs were moving through this area, but also what they were doing as they moved through,” they explained.
Next, the team said it hopes to explore more track sites like Carreras Pampas, which are more common in Bolivia than other Cretaceous sites, to fill in more blanks about dinosaur behavior and to catalogue them before they are potentially lost to a changing planet.
The study “Morphotypes, preservation, and taphonomy of dinosaur footprints, tail traces, and swim tracks in the largest tracksite in the world: Carreras Pampa (Upper Cretaceous), Torotoro National Park, Bolivia” was published in PLOS One.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.