The arid Carreras Pampa in Bolivia is home to a prehistoric treasure once overlooked by paleontologists. Scattered across the dusty landscape are thousands of dinosaur footprints, silent impressions that now tell a vivid story about how the ancient reptiles once moved, traveled and even swam across what is now South America. Researchers suggest that the area may have once served as an important travel route for dinosaurs—a dinosaur highway, if you will.
In a new study published in PLUS oneResearchers from the California Geosciences Research Institute, in collaboration with other scientists, describe a surprising variety of dinosaur footprints preserved at the Carreras Pampas race site in Torotoro National Park. Across nine study areas, the team documented more than 16,000 individual footprints, making this the most extensive dinosaur footprint site ever discovered.
Read more: Could the remarkable footprints of prehistoric amphibians be older than those of dinosaurs?
Fossilized footprints give clues to how dinosaurs moved
All of the footprints belong to three-toed theropods, a group of bipedal dinosaurs best known for including large predators such as tyrannosaurus rex. But these Bolivian trackers were of all sizes. Some tracks are less than four inches long, while others are over a foot long, suggesting this is a mixed specimen passing through the area.
Even more impressive than the sheer number of footprints is what they reveal about dinosaur behavior. Fossilized footprints record animals running, making sharp turns, dragging their tails and, in some cases, moving through water.
But how do scientists extract this level of detail from simple footprints?
“Some information about movement is preserved directly in the tracks, for example, tracks that turn or have tail tracks associated with them,” says Jeremy A. McLarty, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Southwestern Adventist University. “Other reconstructions of movement are based on comparisons with living animals, such as whether the dinosaur walked or ran and how fast it moved.”
Bolivia has perfect conditions to preserve dinosaur footprints
Prehistoric footprints and members of the research team at site Cp1 (Carreras Pampa).
(Image courtesy of Raúl Esperante)
The Carreras Pampas site already caught the attention of scientists in 2015, when the park rangers of the Torotoro National Park brought it to the attention of researchers. Follow-up visits only added to his enthusiasm.
“During our research, we were surprised by the abundance and variety of trace fossils preserved at the site,” says McLarty. Researchers describe the area as “a stunning window into this area’s past,” according to a press release.
Bolivia is already famous for its dinosaur footprint sites, preserving footprints spanning almost 200 million years, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. The country’s unique combination of soft sediments, stable geology and rich dinosaur populations appears to have created ideal conditions for fossilizing footprints before they could erode.
Some researchers believe this region may have once formed “part of a dinosaur highway through South America,” McLarty adds.
The authors also note that many more footprints remain unexplored at Carreras Pampa and other footprint sites throughout Bolivia.
Reading dinosaur footprints around the world
Most of the Carreras Pampas tracks have a different orientation: from northwest to southeast. Ripple marks in the sediment reveal the presence of an ancient coastline, suggesting that dinosaurs followed the edge of a long-lost body of water as they traveled.
The site now sets world records for the number of individual dinosaur footprints, continuous footprints, tail tracks and swim tracks discovered in a single location. The incredible abundance reinforces the idea that Carreras Pampa was an area of high dinosaur traffic, and the parallel orientation of some footprints even raises the possibility that groups of dinosaurs traveled together.
The research team is already working on additional projects to uncover more details hidden in the clues. They also hope to expand their research to other understudied regions of Bolivia.
McLarty believes the Bolivian footprint sites could help guide research elsewhere. With so many footprints preserved in one place, the site offers a rare opportunity to compare patterns of movement and behavior across age groups and conditions, data that could inform how scientists interpret dinosaur footprints around the world for years to come.
Read more: Dinosaur Highway with Sauropod Tracks Provides Snapshot of Life in the Middle Jurassic
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