A team of paleontologists has uncovered matching dinosaur footprints on two separate continents, now divided by thousands of miles of ocean, CBS News reports.
The footprints, dating back to the Early Cretaceous period, were found in Brazil and Cameroon, as reported in a study published on Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. The find indicates that land-dwelling dinosaurs were able to traverse freely between South America and Africa before the continents separated millions of years ago.
The research team analyzed more than 260 footprints, which were imprinted into mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes, with over 3,700 miles separating the finds in South America and Africa. The footprints were determined to be similar in age, shape, and geological context.
Some 120 million years ago, these tracks were made on a supercontinent known as Gondwana, which had broken off from the larger landmass of Pangea—earth’s only continent at the time.
“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,” Lead study author and Southern Methodist University paleontologist Louis Jacobs explained.
According to researchers, the continents started to split around 140 million years ago, eventually forming the South Atlantic Ocean.
As the continents pulled apart, basins formed, allowing rivers to flow and lakes to develop. These basins, where the footprints were found, exist on both sides of the split. Most of the footprints belong to three-toed theropods, a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, but researchers also identified prints left by sauropods and ornithischians.
“Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain,” Jacobs noted. “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.”
