Follow
Dinosaur Footsteps Discovered Millions of Years Later
It seems as though carnivore dinosaurs also had romantic relationships and walked across the beach during a cool night. At least these are the assumptions that we can draw based off those of a few scientists who claim that, around 142 million years ago, two giant reptiles walked across the beach and left their footsteps for the world to see.
The footsteps represent a new interest for researchers as they are trying to understand what dinosaurs lived in today’s new age northern Germany. According to the footprints, one of the dinosaurs was very large while other one was considerably smaller. They were both walking slowly, their combined average speed measuring 8 km/h.
They might have actually been a mother and her baby and we can take that into consideration based on the fact that the little one was trotting from time to time. This might have occurred because he was trying to keep up the pace. Also, the footprints show that the two reptiles might have slipped from time to time, most likely because of the wet sand.
Pernille Troelsen, who has recently graduated from the University of Southern Denmark, mentioned that the dinosaurs’ paces are remarkably slow, especially because carnivorous species such as this one could run as fast as 40 km/h, or even more.
While researchers have been gathering into Germany’s Bückeberg Formation for the last two centuries hoping to study dinosaur footprints, Troelsen took particular interest in these two tracks. She is confident that her biology background allows her to study the issue from a very different perspective.
Moreover, Troelsen stated that she wanted to make a contribution by explaining how these reptiles behaved under different conditions. Troelsen feels that this is the area where she can prove herself as a true biologist.
Based on her footprint analysis, she was able to provide some insight about the lengths of these two creatures: the large dinosaur’s feet measured somewhere around 13.5 by 14.3 inches while the little guy’s feet measured about 9.3 by 9.3 inches. Also, their hip height was around 5.2 feet for the big specimen and 3.6 feet for the small one.
Troelsen suspects that they were a meat-eating species, quite resembling to the Megalosauripus genus. She deemed them dangerous, agile hunters who mainly walked and ran on their two legs.
However, no exact conclusion can be drawn at this moment, since there is no clear evidence as to when these two animals walked on the beach. Troelsen believes it can be a mother who cared for her baby, but they could also be two different footsteps from two different species who coincidentally travelled along the same path during different years.
Only time will tell whether these footprints can give direct indications concerning the species and the precise time when they crossed the northern German beach.
Photo Credits wp.com
