[Rockhounds] Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

An international team of researchers led by SMU paleontologist Louis L.
Jacobs has found matching sets of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on
what are now two different continents.

More than 260 footprints were discovered in Brazil and in Cameroon, showing
where land-dwelling dinosaurs were last able to freely cross between South
America and Africa millions of years ago before the two continents split
apart.

"We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar," Jacobs
said. "In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also
similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical."

The footprints, impressed into mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes,
were found more than 3,700 miles, or 6,000 kilometers, away from each
other. Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single
supercontinent known as Gondwana
<https://phys.org/news/2013-09-oldest-gondwana-creature.html>—which broke
off from the larger landmass of Pangea, Jacobs said.

https://phys.org/news/2024-08-dinosaur-footprints-sides-atlantic-ocean.html