Two consultant theropod tracks from the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon. Credit score: SMU
A global crew of researchers led through SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs has discovered matching units of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on what at the moment are two other continents.
Greater than 260 footprints have been came upon in Brazil and in Cameroon, appearing the place land-dwelling dinosaurs have been final in a position to freely pass between South The us and Africa thousands and thousands of years in the past ahead of the 2 continents break up aside.
“We decided that in the case of age, those footprints have been equivalent,” Jacobs mentioned. “Of their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they have been additionally equivalent. In relation to their shapes, they’re virtually an identical.”
The footprints, inspired into dust and silt alongside historical rivers and lakes, have been discovered greater than 3,700 miles, or 6,000 kilometers, clear of each and every different. Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years in the past on a unmarried supercontinent referred to as Gondwana—which broke off from the bigger landmass of Pangea, Jacobs mentioned.
“One of the most youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South The us was once the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled in opposition to what’s now the coast of Cameroon alongside the Gulf of Guinea,” Jacobs defined. “The 2 continents have been steady alongside that slim stretch, in order that animals on all sides of that connection may probably transfer throughout it.”
Theropod footprint from Sousa Basin, Decrease Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil. Credit score: Ismar de Souza Carvalho
Lots of the dinosaur fossils have been created through three-toed theropod dinosaurs. A couple of have been additionally most likely made through sauropods or ornithischians, mentioned Diana P. Winery, who’s a analysis affiliate at SMU and co-author of the learn about.
Different co-authors of the learn about have been Lawrence J. Flynn within the Division of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard College, Christopher R. Scotese within the Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern College and Ismar de Souza Carvalho on the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Centro de Geociências.
The learn about was once revealed through New Mexico Museum of Herbal Historical past & Science in a tribute to the overdue paleontologist Martin Lockley, who spent a lot of his profession learning dinosaur tracks and footprints.
A protracted ornithopod trackway at Passagem das Pedra, Sousa Basin preserved in floodplain deposits of Decrease Cretaceous. Credit score: Ismar de Souza Carvalho
Dinosaur footprints inform the entire tale
Africa and South The us began to separate round 140 million years in the past, inflicting gashes in Earth’s crust referred to as rifts to open up alongside pre-existing weaknesses.
Because the tectonic plates underneath South The us and Africa moved aside, magma from the Earth’s mantle rose to the skin, growing new oceanic crust because the continents moved clear of each and every different. And in the end, the South Atlantic Ocean crammed the void between those two newly-shaped continents.
Indicators of a few of the ones main occasions have been glaring between each places the place the dinosaur footprints have been discovered—on the Borborema area within the northeast a part of Brazil and the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon. Part-graben basins—geologic buildings shaped throughout rifting because the Earth’s crust pulls aside and faults shape—are present in each spaces and comprise historical river and lake sediments.
At the side of dinosaur tracks, those sediments comprise fossil pollen that point out an age of 120 million years.
Prior to the continental connection between Africa and South The us was once severed, “rivers flowed and lakes shaped within the basins” Jacobs mentioned.
“Vegetation fed the herbivores and supported a meals chain. Muddy sediments left through the rivers and lakes comprise dinosaur footprints, together with the ones of meat-eaters, documenting that those river valleys may provide particular avenues for existence to trip around the continents 120 million years in the past.”
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