An international team of paleontologists, including researchers from Southern Methodist University in Texas, has identified matching sets of dinosaur tracks from the early Cretaceous period on opposite shores of the Atlantic. These discoveries illuminate a time when landmasses lay far closer together than today and when dinosaurs roamed across what would become two distant continents.
More than 260 tracks have been documented, revealing places where dinosaurs once crossed open landscapes between South America and Africa millions of years ago, long before the two continents separated. The footprint patterns show a remarkable continuity in size, shape, and distribution, suggesting that these dinosaurs moved across a combined coastal region that later became the South Atlantic seaway.
Experts note that the paw prints share consistent age and geological characteristics. The bone-bearing impressions are estimated to be around 120 million years old and presently lie across a gap of roughly 6,000 kilometers, a distance created by plate tectonics rather than any single migration path. The findings help map how ancient ecosystems connected across continents before the Atlantic Ocean existed in its present form.
The split between Africa and South America began about 140 million years ago. Cracks, faults, and fractures formed along zones of weakness in the Earth’s crust as mantle dynamics pushed the landmasses apart. These events were part of the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, which itself had separated from a larger landmass called Pangaea. The drifting plates created new oceanic crust as magma welled up from the mantle and cooled to form the seafloor that would become the South Atlantic Ocean.
As the tectonic plates of South America and Africa moved away from each other, magma from the mantle rose to fill the gaps, giving rise to new oceanic crust. The widening rift and subsequent seafloor spreading created the ocean that now separates the two continents. The study of these tracks not only sheds light on dinosaur behavior but also offers a window into the processes that shaped the modern world map.
Earlier researchers recognized that dinosaur tracks have long influenced human culture, including inspiring artists in Brazil. These traces provide a tangible link between the deep past and the artistic imagination of later generations, illustrating how natural history can resonate across time and through different cultures.