The arid Carreras Pampa in Bolivia harbors a prehistoric treasure that paleontologists once overlooked. Spread across the dusty landscape are thousands of dinosaur footprints, silent impressions that now tell a vivid story about how ancient reptiles once moved, traveled, and even swam through what is today South America. Researchers suggest the area may once have served as a major travel route for dinosaurs, a dino highway, so to speak.
In a new study published in PLOS One, researchers from the Geoscience Research Institute in California, in collaboration with other scientists, describe an astonishing variety of dinosaur tracks preserved at the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Torotoro National Park. Across nine study areas, the team documented more than 16,000 individual footprints, making this the most extensive dinosaur tracksite ever discovered.
Read More: Could Remarkable Footprints of Prehistoric Amphibians Be Older Than the Dinosaurs?
Fossilized Footprints Give Clues on How Dinosaurs Moved
All of the tracks belong to three-toed theropods, a group of bipedal dinosaurs best known for including top predators like T. rex. But these Bolivian trackmakers came in all sizes. Some footprints measure less than four inches long, while others exceed a foot in length, hinting at a mix specimen passing through the area.
Even more impressive than the sheer number of tracks is what they reveal about dinosaur behavior. The 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 trackways, for example, trackways that turn or have associated tail traces,” says Jeremy A. McLarty, 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 was walking or running, and how fast it was moving.”
Bolivia Has Perfect Conditions to Preserve Dinosaur Footprints
Prehistoric footprints and members of the research team at the Cp1 (Carreras Pampa) site.
(Image Courtesy of Raúl Esperante)
The Carreras Pampas site already came to scientists’ attention in 2015, when park rangers in Torotoro National Park brought it to the researchers’ notice. Follow-up visits only increased their excitement.
“During our research, we were amazed by the abundance and variety of fossil traces preserved at the site,” McLarty says. The researchers describe the area as “a stunning window into this area’s past,” according to a news release.
Bolivia is already renowned for its dinosaur tracksites, which preserve footprints spanning nearly 200 million years, from the Triassic through the Cretaceous. The country’s unique combination of soft sediment, stable geology, and rich dinosaur populations appears to have created ideal conditions for fossilizing footprints before they could erode away.
Some researchers believe this region may once have formed “part of a dinosaur freeway across South America,” McLarty adds.
The authors also note that many more footprints remain unexplored at Carreras Pampa and at other tracksites across Bolivia.
Reading Dinosaur Tracks Around the World
Most Carreras Pampas tracks have a distinct orientation: northwest to southeast. Ripple marks in the sediment reveal the presence of an ancient shoreline, suggesting 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 trackways, tail traces, and swimming traces discovered in one place. The incredible abundance reinforces the idea that Carreras Pampa was a high-traffic area for dinosaurs, and the parallel orientation of some trackways 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 tracks. They also hope to expand their investigations to other understudied regions in Bolivia.
McLarty believes the Bolivian tracksites could help guide research elsewhere. With so many footprints preserved in one place, the site offers a rare opportunity to compare movement patterns and behavior across age groups and conditions, data that could inform how scientists interpret dinosaur trackways around the world for years to come.
Read More: Dinosaur Highway of Sauropod Footprints Provides Snapshot of Middle Jurassic Life
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a new study that was published in PLOS One: Morphotypes, preservation, and taphonomy of dinosaur footprints, tail traces, and swim tracks in the largest tracksite in the world: Carreras Pampa (Upper Cretaceous), Torotoro National Park, Bolivia
