A team of paleontologists has discovered matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents separated by thousands of miles of ocean.
Footprints dating back to the Early Cretaceous period have been discovered in Brazil and Cameroon, indicating that land dinosaurs were able to roam freely between South America and Africa before the two continents split apart millions of years ago, according to a study published Monday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
Land transfer
The more than 260 footprints the researchers examined were found in mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes, and were separated by more than 3,700 miles in South America and Africa. Paleontologists determined that the prints share similar ages, shapes, geology and plate tectonic settings.
A dinosaur left a single footprint 120 million years ago. Supercontinent The continent, known as Gondwana, broke off from Pangaea, which was once the world’s only other continent, according to paleontologist Louis Jacobs of Southern Methodist University.
“One of the newest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America is the bend in northeastern Brazil that meets the modern-day coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea,” said Jacobs, lead author of the study. “In this narrow stretch, the two continents were continuous, so animals on either side of the connection could have migrated across it.”
According to researchers, the continents now known as Africa and South America began to break apart about 140 million years ago, with the South Atlantic Ocean eventually filling the void.
As the continents tore apart, basins formed that allowed rivers to flow through them and form lakes, Jacobs said. The basins where the footprints were found can be found on either side of the split continents.
What we know about dinosaurs
Most of the footprints belong to three-toed theropods, a type of carnivorous dinosaur, the researchers said, but there were also some sauropod and ornithischian tracks.
“The plants provided food for herbivores, which supported the food chain,” Jacobs said. “Dinosaur footprints, including carnivorous ones, remain in the muddy sediments of rivers and lakes, proving that these river valleys provided special migration routes for life across the continents 120 million years ago.”