Around 140 million years ago, Africa and South America started to split. This caused Earth’s rifts to open with pre-existing weaknesses. As the tectonic plates under South America and Africa spread apart, hot, melted rock from deep inside the Earth formed new ocean floors. This happened as the continents slowly drifted away from each other.
A new study reports the discovery of matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents. These footprints are believed to be of Early Cretaceous dinosaurs. The footprints were found more than 3,700 miles, or 6,000 kilometers, apart at the Borborema region in the northeast of Brazil and the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon.
More than 260 dinosaur footprints were found in Brazil and Cameroon. These footprints show where dinosaurs used to walk between South America and Africa millions of years ago before the continents drifted apart.
According to scientists, these footprints are about the same age. They are also similar in their geological and plate tectonic contexts. Plus, their shapes are almost identical.
SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs said, “Dinosaurs made the tracks 120 million years ago on a single supercontinent known as Gondwana– which broke off from the larger landmass of Pangea.”
The three-toed theropod dinosaurs created most dinosaur fossils, but the sauropods or ornithischians also created a few.
Along with dinosaur tracks, these sediments contain fossil pollen that indicates an age of 120 million years.
Jacobs said, “Before the continental connection between Africa and South America was severed, rivers flowed and lakes formed in the basins. Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain. Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago.”
The study was published in print by New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in a tribute to the late paleontologist Martin Lockley, who spent much of his career studying dinosaurs tracks and footprints.