Palaeontology

Thousands of dinosaur tracks discovered

By T.K. Randall
September 26, 2013 ·  6 comments

The team found large numbers of prints. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Greg Willis A research term exploring the region came across thousands of fossilized dinosaur tracks along the shoreline. Consisting of scientists from the University of Alaska's Museum of the North, the team traveled over 500 miles down the Tanana and Yukon rivers and returned with more than 900kg of footprint fossils.

"We found dinosaur footprints by the scores on literally every outcrop we stopped at," said researcher Paul McCarthy. "I've seen dinosaur footprints in Alaska now in rocks from southwest Alaska, the North Slope and Denali National Park in the Interior, but there aren't many places where footprints occur in such abundance."The discovery of an area so rich in fossil footprints is very rare and is being hailed as highly significant. The prints seem to come from a wide variety of different dinosaurs and are so abundant that it's possible to come across up to 50 specimens in as little as ten minutes.

"We found a great diversity of dinosaur types, evidence of an extinct ecosystem we never knew existed," said museum curator Pat Druckenmiller.

Source: Live Science | Comments (6)

Tags: Dinosaur Footprints