Dinosaur Footprint Discovery Sheds New Light on Prehistoric Life Before Continental Drift

The recent discovery of matching dinosaur footprints in Brazil and Cameroon reveals how dinosaurs lived before the continents separated.

An international research team has found over 260 footprints from the Early Cretaceous period in Brazil’s Borborema region and Cameroon’s Koum Basin. These footprints illustrate the migration patterns of dinosaurs on a globe that looked very different from today’s.

Millions of years before the world became interconnected through exploration and telecommunications, a single supercontinent existed on Earth. This landmass, known as Pangea, eventually broke apart, forming the continents and islands we recognize today. Over the course of 165 million years, dinosaurs witnessed this gradual breakup.

Paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs from Southern Methodist University led the team that focused on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. Formed about 120 million years ago, Gondwana was one of the large landmasses that emerged as Pangea began to break apart, preceding further separations. Jacobs explained his team’s work in identifying a once-shared location for the footprints: “We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar,” he said, adding, “In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical.”

The Splintering of Earth’s Surface

Around 140 million years ago, Africa and South America began to separate from Pangea. As the tectonic plates moved apart, magma surged from below, filling the gaps. The resulting layer of crust formed the bed of the South Atlantic Ocean. Both the Borborema region and the Koum Basin display half-graben basins—geological structures characterized by a fault along only one side, providing evidence of where the Earth’s crust once fractured.

Jacobs described the ancient geography: “One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil, nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea.” He emphasized that “The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it.”

Investigating a Prehistoric World

Cameroon’s Cretaceous vertebrate fossil record is sparse, with its first dinosaur footprint discovered in 1986. This initial find was a theropod footprint, the most common type identified, although small numbers of poorly preserved ornithopod and sauropod tracks were also found in the region. The team combined published information on these tracks and the region from that time with data from Brazil, where matching tracks were found, to develop detailed statistical models. These models integrated information on climate, atmosphere, and track locations to better understand both the ancient landscape and how dinosaurs moved across it.

The prints were preserved in the mud and silt that lined the bottoms of lakes and rivers millions of years ago. Today, these footprints are 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) apart, but when Gondwana was intact, the dinosaurs that made them traveled the same ancient network of waterways in search of food. “Before the continental connection between Africa and South America was severed, rivers flowed and lakes formed in the basins. Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain. Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago,” explained Jacobs. During the Cretaceous period on Gondwana, these tracks would have been spread across a 1,000-mile-wide “corridor” of wildlife migration.