Drought in Texas reveals 110-million-year-old dinosaur footprints

“It’s just an amazing sight”

The decline in the water level due to the heat allowed American scientists to find footprints of giant dinosaurs in Texas, whose age is 110 million years.

As Texas hit a record heat wave this summer and a growing drought lowered water levels, a group of volunteers have discovered something of a kind: new footprints from giant dinosaurs believed to be around 110 million years old, CNN reports.

Paul Baker, manager at Dinosaur Valley Park, told CNN he “had never seen so many dinosaur footprints before.”

“It’s exciting to see what no one else has seen; it’s almost like a treasure hunt in a way, says Baker, who helps map dinosaur tracks in the park. “I thought I saw every dinosaur footprint there is, but over the past two years, because of the drought we’ve had and the hard work of our volunteers, it’s just an amazing sight.”

Dinosaur Valley State Park, about an hour and a half south of Dallas, contains a large number of dinosaur footprints from sauropods and theropods that lived in the area approximately 113 million years ago. It’s a hotspot for dinosaur enthusiasts and tourists, who usually flock to the now-dry Paluxy River to fish, swim and kayak.

As the water levels dropped this summer, more ancient history has been revealed. A severe drought has spread to parts of Texas since June, and the extreme drought is now covering more than a third of the state, US Drought Monitoring reported recently.

The discovery of an important piece of paleontological history is kind of the bright side of extreme weather for Glen Cuban, who has been working and writing on the Paluxy dinosaur footprints in and around Dinosaur Valley State Park for over 40 years.

And this year, Cuban’s work has mostly focused on cleaning up two large patches in the park, known as Ballroom and Denio, where he plans to expand the park’s path mapping to include those previously buried under mud and water.

Scientists have determined that the newly discovered footprints likely belong to two theropod species: an acrocanthosaurus, which weighed up to 7 tons, and a sauropod, also known as paluxisaurus, which weighed around 44 tons.

“It’s important to clarify that a drought doesn’t magically restore a track to its original state,” Cuban told CNN. – Even when the river dries up, the paths are usually covered with a lot of gravel, sand and dried mud. Many volunteers take many days – in this case weeks – to remove the sediment that covers and fills the lanes.

Last year, Glen Cuban organized a group of volunteers, including members of the Dallas Paleontological Society, master naturalists and friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park, to clean and map the longest dinosaur tail in North America—more than 130 steps—as well as several footprints next to it. All the while, Baker provides them with consumables, equipment, and logistical support, as well as helping with research.