A few days ago it happened in China. The lowering of the levels of the Yangtze River revealed a Buddhist temple with three sculptures of more than 600 years old in the municipality of Chongqing. It has also happened in Spain, where the low levels of the Tagus revealed an archaeological site dating from between the 5th and 3rd century BC that had been flooded in 1963 for the construction of a reservoir. Now it is the turn of Texas, where the drought has made visible the dinosaur tracks from 113 million years ago in a national park in the city of Glen Rose. The footprints have been found in the bed of the Paluxy River, which has practically disappeared due to the high temperatures in this region of the United States.
“They are very good size marks, from a theropod. These are usually underwater,” says Paul Bakes, a volunteer at Dinosaur Valley National Park, in a video. “It’s surface water, but usually it’s under soil and sediment… There’s a lot of it,” he added. The images were posted on August 17 in a Facebook group, becoming a sensation. Those responsible for the operation of the park located in Somervelle County (central Texas), have confirmed the finding. The images show in great detail the claw marks of the trident-shaped footprints, which corresponded to the family of carnivorous dinosaurs, such as allosaurs, tyrannosaurs and raptors, ancestors of birds.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, this part of Texas was the edge of a sea. The calcium carbonate from the shells of the coastal crustaceans formed a mud with a viscous texture that has been extraordinary in preserving the footprints of these multi-ton animals. Some footprints could already be seen in the park, especially from acrontosaurus, a species somewhat smaller than a tyrannosaurus, which could reach six meters in height and weigh five tons. These marks predate those that have now been discovered thanks to the worst drought in a decade. Texas recorded, between April and July, the highest temperatures for the season in its entire history.
The first discoveries in the bed of the Paluxy, a branch of the Brazos de Dios River, which runs from New Mexico to the Gulf, date back to the beginning of the 20th century. So a boy named George Adams was among the first to notice dinosaur footprints. Footprints of sauropods, known for their long necks (brotosaurs, brachiosaurs, diplodocus and titanosaurs), have also been found in the area. Bones of a huge sauropod discovered in 1996 led to debate over whether they had stumbled upon a new type of dinosaur. The scientists concluded that, with great probability, a huge sauroposeidon of about 21 meters in height had paraded through the area. His passage, immortalized by a weight that exceeded 40 tons, left the impression of a footprint that measured almost a meter.
These types of discoveries have always amazed in the United States. Paleontologist Steve Brusatte tells in his wonderful The rise and fall of the dinosaurs (Debate, 2019) the story of Paul Olsen, a young man from Livingston, New Jersey, who in 1968 found dinosaur tracks north of his town on land where a mine was planned. The young man became a passionate activist and sent Richard Nixon, who had just arrived at the White House, a plaster cast of a theropod footprint. The campaign paid off. The mining company donated the land to the county, and the president ordered the creation of Riker Hill, a fossil site. Olsen received a medal for his work.
Some of that passion for dinosaurs is still alive. Hours after the viral video, torrential rains inundated parts of Texas, especially east of Dallas. The mud again covered, albeit superficially, the dinosaur tracks that had been sighted in recent days. A large group of volunteers showed up shortly after at the riverbed to help clean up the area and start a project that aims to make a map of the marks and catalog whether they correspond to theropods or sauropods, species that have amazed us. for hundreds of years.
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