Scientists Discover Matching Dinosaur Footprints 7,000 Miles Apart on Two Continents
These dinosaurs hung out in today's Africa and South America before the continents split
Hiya!
Today, humans dominate the planet’s seven continents, but once upon a time, dinosaurs ruled the world — and were the longest-reigning animal group to exist. Naturally, we’re curious, even fascinated by the dinosaurs and their version of Earth. Dinosaur fossils have been found worldwide and teach us what these animals may have looked like, ate, and a little about how they lived.
However, fossils and the sediment they reside in also tell us what Earth was like when dinosaurs roamed. For instance, experts have identified matching sets of dinosaur footprints in Brazil and Cameroon, which are on different continents… located on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. How in the heck did that happen? Well, I’ll tell you.
A Bit of Earth History
Before we get to the new research, let’s review a bit of Earth’s history. Today, Brazil, in South America, and Cameroon, in Africa, are separated by thousands of miles of ocean water. But for millions of years, the two continents were part of one massive supercontinent.
Experts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries started noticing that Earth’s continents, especially the South American and African coastlines, seemed to fit together like puzzle pieces — now known as continental drift. In 1912, a German meteorologist named Alfred Wegner officially proposed that all of Earth’s seven continents used to form a single massive landmass called Pangea.
Since then, scientists have determined that Pangea did, in fact, exist, and it wasn’t Earth’s first supercontinent either. Still, Pangea likely formed during the Paleozoic Era, roughly 542 million years ago.
Then, around 180 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, Pangea started breaking into two continents — Gondwana to the south (comprised of modern-day Antarctica, Australia, Africa, and South America) and Laurasia to the north (today’s Eurasia and North America).
About 40 million years later, 140 million years ago, Gondwana started to separate, and today’s South America and Africa began drifting apart. This divergence created gashes in the weak points of the planet’s crust, called rifts.
As the tectonic plates under South America and Africa split, magma from deep in the Earth rose to the surface, creating a new oceanic crust as the continents divided. Eventually, the South Atlantic Ocean seeped in and filled the gap.
If we had a time-lapse video of this process spanning millions of years, it might look a bit like South America and Africa are slowly being pulled apart like puddy.
For a period, a thin corridor connected the two continents wide enough for dinosaurs to travel between them. Louis L. Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Texas and the lead researcher of the study I’ll tell you about soon, explained in an SMU statement,
“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. The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it.”
Jacobs describes the path as “a neck of land connecting the two” continents before they were severed for good. But at the time the neck existed, Jacobs said in the statement,
“rivers flowed and lakes formed in the basins. Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain.”
Archeologists continue to find evidence of prehistoric animal activity, including dinosaurs. Jacobs goes on to explain (the bolding is mine):
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.”
Jacobs wanted to know more about the dinosaurs that used the landbridge, so he and an international team of researchers analyzed over 260 dinosaur footprints left in the sediments of the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon and the Borborema region of northeastern Brazil — and they discovered something extraordinary.
The Discovery
The researchers identified “matching” dinosaur tracks, fossilized pollen, and sediments from ancient lakes and rivers in basins that formed as South America and Africa split. The similar prints date to 120 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous — just before the two continents fully diverged.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science published the discovery in print on August 23, 2024, as a tribute to the late paleontologist Martin Lockley, who spent much of his career studying dinosaur tracks and footprints.
Diana P. Vineyard, a research associate at SMU and a co-author of the study, told Will Sullivan of Smithsonian Magazine the footprints likely belonged to the carnivorous, three-toed theropods, which walked on two feet, the four-legged sauropods, herbivores with long tails and necks, or ornithischians which were closely related to birds.
Footprints may not initially seem as exciting as discovering dinosaur bones, but the prints provide unique insights into dinosaur behavior that their bones don’t. Jacobs explained to Alexandra E. Petri of the New York Times,
“Dinosaur tracks tell you things bones won’t. It shows how they moved, where they moved, whether they moved alone or with others. It’s a different way of looking at the past, because there is different information contained in the footprints.”
The footprints Jacobs and his team analyzed show where land-dwelling dinosaurs last crossed between Africa and South America before the two continents diverged millions of years ago. In the SMU statement, Jacobs said:
“We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar, in their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical.”
It’s incredible scientists have discovered as many surviving dinosaur prints as they have. After all, unlike bones, which can fossilize and are typically protected by sediment, footprints are fleeting. How so many dinosaur footprints have survived for tens or hundreds of millions of years without being washed away or eroded by the planet’s ever-shifting climate is beyond me.
But discovering “matching” sets of dinosaur footprints on two continents with an ocean between them seems like something that would only happen in a Jurassic Park movie.
Perspective Shift
Science is so cool. Thanks to this research, we now know a little more about Earth’s history. I suppose it also shows that just as we change and shift throughout our lives, so too does Earth. And it leaves traces of its past that we can piece together.
The footprints Jacobs and his team identified show that once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the continents shifted, moved, and grew apart. Dinosaurs traveled between them, along a “neck of land” stretching between today's South America and Africa, until eventually, Earth completed its transition, and the dinosaurs became trapped on one side or the other.
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