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First-ever adult Tyrannosaurus rex trackway discovered in North Dakota badlands
Valley News Live • • general
Key Points:
- Paleontologists have discovered the first known trackway made by a full-grown Tyrannosaurus rex, consisting of four connected footprints found in southwestern North Dakota near the Montana border.
- The trackway, about 23 feet long with footprints roughly 3 feet each, allows researchers to estimate the T. rex was walking at 3.5 to 4.5 mph despite weighing over seven tons.
- This discovery, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is significant because previous finds only included isolated footprints that did not show movement or behavior.
- The tracks were attributed to T. rex based on their size, shape, and the abundance of tyrannosaur fossils in the surrounding rock, including a juvenile specimen found nearby in 2022.
- Three of the footprints will be airlifted to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for further study, and the tracks date back about 66.5 million years, near the end of the Cretaceous period.
