Discovery of Ancient Dinosaur Tracks Untearthed in Texas due to Drought

Volunteer researchers in Texas have discovered nearly 75 new dinosaur tracks dating back to the early Cretaceous period, all thanks to record-breaking temperatures that have dried up the Paluxy River beds in Dinosaur Valley State Park.

Drought-like conditions have been nearly twice the standard in North Texas, which has had 41 days at 100 degrees or higher this summer, compared to a typical annual average of just 20 days.

So far, volunteers have detected the three-clawed imprint of what was likely the distant ancestor of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex: the short-armed, 15-foot-tall predator Acrocanthosaurus.

Acrocanthosaurus could normally weigh close to 14,000 pounds, and all of that weight drove its tracks deeper into the riverbed.

Amateur paleontologists also found even heavier footprints from Sauroposeidon, a Brachiosaurus or Brontosaurus-like dinosaur that could reach more than 100 feet tall with its long neck and weigh up to 88,000 pounds.

Sauroposeidon is also the official dinosaur of the state of Texas.

‘This is not normal for us. Normally, all of this would be underwater,” said Jeff Davis, superintendent of Dinosaur Valley State Park, in a recent interview with the dallas morning news.

“It’s been another very hot and very dry year, so our researchers are trying to take advantage of the drought.” Davis added.

Similar dry conditions also revealed fossilized dinosaur tracks around this time last year.

Dinosaur Valley State Park is home to a variety of dinosaur tracks, mostly from ancient sauropods and theropods, from the mid-Cretaceous period, when the Dallas region of Texas lay on the shores of a sea.

Many of the theropod tracks in the park do not show their distinctive three-toed pattern because the tracks were made in deep, liquid mud, burying the toe prints, according to the Dinosaur Valley State Park website.

Sauropods include herbivorous dinosaur species such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus, which had large, flat elephant-like feet, while theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex had clawed feet and three toes.

Based in Glen Rose, Texas, Dinosaur Valley’s roughly 2.4 square miles is frequently visited by Dallas residents from 80 miles to the southwest.

Davis told the Morning News that he and the park’s volunteer paleontologists are in a race against time to catalog the fossilized footprints for posterity, before the rains hide them and slowly erode them once more.

“These won’t be here forever,” Davis said. “We do everything we can to preserve these pieces of history.”

A few heavy rains will wash sediment in its wake as it fills the Paluxy River, filling in the fossilized footprints and hiding them in a new smooth surface of mud.

While this mud has benefits, it helps prevent fossils from eroding, this geologic cycle will eventually completely erode these rare dinosaur footprints.

Davis hopes that researchers will be able to map the tracks and document them photographically, as well as through measurements and casting.

In the past, such as 1938, entire physical fossil footprints have been removed from the Paluxy River and sent to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

This year’s droughts in Texas have also unearthed more recent history, including The remains of a steamship built during the First World War. to transport American troops and supplies to France.

The wreckage of the nearly 300-foot-long sunken ship was found by a man on a jet ski in the Neches River this August in East Texas.