A unique fossil route in Canada provides a tentter snapshot of an interaction between predatory dinosaurs and herds of plant canteens that may have been their prey.
At least 20 tracks left by Dinosaurs 76 million years ago (MYA) were discovered in July 2024 in the Dinosaur Provincial Park in the Canadian province Alberta. The slopes date from the last part of the Cretaceous period that lasted up to 66 mya, when an asteroid finished the “Dinosaurs Era” in a global mass extinction.
The paleontologists excavated about 29m2 of the site to reveal 13 traces left by the dinosaurs of Ceratopsian: plants dining rooms with horns related to Triceratops. These clues were left by at least 5 people walked next to each other, indicating a flock.
The team identifies 2 Ceratopsian genres known to the region that conform to the size, shape and age of the clues: Spiritism (grew to 5.5 m long, 3 tons) or Chasmosaurio (5 m long, 2 tons).
Aother 3 tracks belong to a dinosaur that eats meat from the same group as Tyrannosaurus RexBut smaller.
Tyrannosaurid clues could have been left by a small predator stalking their prey.
But the most unusual and scientifically significant discovery on the clues is that the Ceratopsians were not grazing alone: they were joined by another dining room of plants belonging to the ankyloid or armored nodosaurid groups.
Several candidate species for these tracks have been suggested, including anquilosourids of 2 tons 7m long. Euoplocephalus andDyoplasourusor the similar size Panoplasaurus.
This is the first evidence of a mixed pack of different dinosaurs species. Mixed grazing is seen in modern animals today, for example, zebra and Ñus are often seen in mixed herds in the plains of Africa.
Paleontologists have often wondered if dinosaurs could also have exhibited this behavior as a means of mutual protection.
This theory was presented in the 1999 BBC documentary series Walking with dinosaurs But Canadian tracks are the first time that fossil concrete evidence has shown different dinosaur grazing species together.
The finding is detailed in a paper published in Plos one.
“I have collected dinosaurs bones in the Dinosaur Provincial Park for almost 20 years, but I had never thought much about footprints,” says the co-leader PHIL BELL author of the University of New England in Australia. “This rock edge had the mud look that had shaken between the fingers of the feet, and immediately intrigued me.”
“Tyranosaur’s slopes give the feeling that they were really looking at the flock, which is a rather chilling thought, but we don’t know certainly if they really crossed.”
“It was incredibly exciting walking through the steps of dinosaurs 76 million years after they left them,” adds co-author Brian Pickles from Reading University, the United Kingdom. “Using the new search images for these traces, we have been able to discover several more track sites within the varied land of the park, which I am sure will tell us even more about how these fascinating creatures interacted with each other and behaved in their natural environment.”
“This discovery shows how much you have to discover in the paleontology of dinosaurs,” says Senior Caleb Brown of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Canada. “Dinosaur Park is one of the best -made dinosaur assemblies worldwide, with more than a century of intense collection and study, but it is only now that we make sense for all its potential for dinosaur tracks.”
#fossil #evidence #dinosaur #species #dedicated
