DINOSAUR VALLEY STATE PARK, TEXAS, USA
Following a summer of excessive drought conditions, parts of the Paluxy River in the US state of Texas dried up. When the water receded, new dinosaur tracks were revealed on the now-exposed riverbed.
“This area is well known for dinosaur tracks, and the first ones were found around 100 years ago, but this discovery shows that there are a lot more of them out there,” says Prof Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
“These huge prints were made by dinosaurs walking along the shore of an ancient subtropical sea. Many of them were bus-sized, carnivorous theropods that would have been nearly the size of Tyrannosaurus rex, which would live in the same area a few tens of millions of years later. These carnivores were the apex predators of their day and, at that time, were the biggest meat-eaters that had ever lived, as far as we know.”