Gewaltige Abdrücke: 66,5 Millionen Jahre alte Spur eines T. rex entdeckt

Marmarth, a small town in North America, recently made headlines as a team of researchers discovered a sequence of four sets of footprints belonging to a massive Tyrannosaurus rex. These tracks, estimated to be nearly a meter long, were found in the Hell-Creek Formation, dating back approximately 66.5 million years. The discovery, reported in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology," marked the first known sequence of multiple step tracks from an adult T. rex.

According to Tyler Lyson, a co-author from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, footprints provide a unique insight into the behavior of these dinosaurs, allowing researchers to follow their movements through the landscape. The wide, weathered tracks, measuring between 60 and 80 centimeters in width, reveal the three toes on the hind feet of the colossal dinosaur. By calculating the distance between steps and the size of the tracks, the researchers estimated the T. rex's hip height to be around four meters.

The pace of the T. rex is also estimated to have been quite fast, reaching speeds of 5 to 7 kilometers per hour - roughly equivalent to a brisk human walk. The preservation of these tracks can be attributed to a specific formation process: as the dinosaur walked on soft ground, it created depressions that were filled with sandy material.

Over time, calcareous groundwater solidified this content and the edges of the tracks, eventually eroding away the surrounding softer rock and exposing the fossilized paths. The researchers concluded that these tracks were most likely left by an adult T. rex due to the abundance of T. rex bones and skeletons found in the immediate area.

Other large herbivores like hadrosaurs, while also capable of creating large, three-toed prints, had distinctly wider toe imprints.