«It's just an amazing sight»
The drop in water levels due to the heat allowed American scientists to discover footprints of giant dinosaurs in Texas, which are 110 million years old.
< img src="https://static.mk.ru/upload/entities/2023/09/04/10/articles/detailPicture/40/9b/bc/91/439b01e3dad9e08f02faf9dc50882f39.jpg" class="article__picture-image" alt =""It's just amazing"" />
As Texas experienced a record heat wave this summer and a growing drought brought water levels down, a group of volunteers have discovered something of a kind: new footprints from giant dinosaurs believed to be around 110 million years old, according to CNN.
Paul Baker, park manager at Dinosaur Valley, told CNN he «never saw so many dinosaur tracks 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, due to 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 affecting 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 Paluxy dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur Valley State Park for over 40 years. and its surroundings.
And this year, Cuban's work has mainly focused on cleaning up two large areas in the park, known as Ballroom and Denio, where he plans to expand the park's path mapping to include those previously were buried under mud and water.
Scientists have determined that the newly discovered footprints likely belong to two types of theropods: an acrocanthosaurus that weighed up to 7 tons, and a sauropod, also known as paluxisaurus, which weighed about 44 tons.
“It is important to clarify that drought doesn't magically restore trails to pristine condition, Cuban told CNN. — Even when the river dries up, the paths are usually covered with a lot of gravel, sand and dried mud. It takes many volunteers many days — weeks in this case- to remove the sediment that covers and fills the paths”.
Last year, Glen Cuban organized a group of volunteers that included members of the Dallas Paleontological Society, craftsmen -naturalists and friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park to clean and map North America's longest dinosaur tail — over 130 steps — plus a few footprints alongside it. All this time, Baker provides them with consumables, equipment and logistical support, and also helps with research.