Jurassic Dinosaur Tracks Reconstructed to Reveal the Path They Traveled to Remote Islands

Scientists may understand the paths that dinosaurs took a bit better. Researchers have reconstructed the footprints of carnivorous dinosaurs and have discovered what route that they took 154 million years ago.

In 2003, a private fossil collector discovered a total of 20 dinosaur footprints imprinted on a stone slab in a limestone quarry near Goslar. He was able to salvage five of the tracks and kept them from being destroyed by quarry work. Now, paleontologists have worked with the collector to reconstruct the tracks in a three-dimensional model using digital techniques.

"Even five years ago, it wouldn't have been technically possible to do this kind of reconstruction," said Jens N. Lallensack, first author of the new study, in a news release.

The tracks measured between 36 and 47 centimeters in length and were probably made by two different species of predatory dinosaurs from the Theropoda group. Using the digital models, the researchers could see how the individual footprints were positioned in relation to one another. This allowed the scientists to reconstruct the moving direction and how fast the animals were traveling.

About 154 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Era, there was a shallow sea throughout this region, with small islands jutting out of it. These islands were inhabited by species of small dinosaurs. Yet it's likely the dinosaurs represented by these tracks immigrated across a land bridge in order to hunt the herbivorous Europasaurus. In fact, these tracks are the only evidence that scientists have found that the region was temporarily dry.

It's likely that the arrival of these carnivores sealed the fate of the small Europasaurus on the islands.

The findings are published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

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