Ancient Megalosauripus Footprints Found In Germany

The findings may reveal that these specific dinosaurs, as well as perhaps many others, were actually social creatures.

These footprints evolved into fossilized specimens eventually and are now helping researchers gain a better understanding of what certain species of dinosaurs used to walk those beaches which is now modern day northern Germany. The prints belong to two dinosaurs – one smaller and one larger – that may have been a parent and offspring.

Pernille Troelsen, a biologist of the University of Southern Denmark and co-author of the research, defined that the animals have been almost strolling on the seashore since the paces are unusually sluggish for them who’re in any other case lively and quick predators.

The formation’s fine-grained quartz sandstones have hosted many fossilized footprints of dinosaurs. Troelsen approached the analysis of the footprints, originally discovered between 2009 and 2011 in Münchehagen in the geological region known as the Bückeberg Formation, from the point of view of a biologist, revealing for the first time how scientists from different disciplines can uncover different types of information from the traces left behind in the distant past. Seemingly, both dinosaurs weren’t in a hurry when they left the prints. This is notably slow for a carnivorous dinosaur that can run more than 40 km/hr.

It is her master’s degree in biology that set her aside from all other geologists that studied the two trackways.

“As a biologist, I can contribute with knowledge about behavior of the individual animals”, Troelsen said in a statement.

The tracks showed a regular movement pattern for the larger dinosaur at about six kilometers per hour, and a largely irregular and hastened pace at about ten kilometers per hour for the smaller, leading the researchers to believe that the adult may have been teaching its young to hunt.

The findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists. The small one occasional crossed its legs on the way, possibly dealing with slippery conditions, strong winds, or simply because it wanted to stick close to the larger one. “We can also see that a duckbill dinosaur (Iguanodon) has crossed their tracks at one time or another, so there has been some traffic in the area”. Megalosauripus were approximately the same size as a velociraptor, made famous from the Jurassic Park films, and likewise walked on their hind legs. However, most dinosaur footprints are found around Europe such as England, Germany and Spain from the Lower Cretaceous period dating back to 140 to 145 million years ago.