As drought conditions continue to dry out one river in Texas, a stunning discovery from about 113 million years ago emerged this week.
Published Aug. 24, 2022 3:16 PM EDT | Updated Aug. 24, 2022 3:16 PM EDT
As waterways continue to dry up amid a summer of droughts, long-submerged relics have resurfaced on at least three continents. And, as one river dries up in Texas, dinosaur footprints dating back over 113 million years have been revealed, including some left by one of the largest creatures to have ever roamed the Earth.
The Dinosaur Valley State Park, near Fort Worth, released photos and a video on Tuesday showing the massive prints in the muddy riverbed of the Paluxy River.
"These are normally under water, so you can't usually see these," the person filming the video explained. "There's tons of them."
An image of a ruler placed next to one of the dinosaur tracks in the video illustrated the massive size of the tracks.
Dinosaur track next to a ruler at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas. (Baker/Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park via Storyful)
"Most tracks that have recently been uncovered and discovered at different parts of the river in the park belong to Acrocathosaurus," park spokesperson Stephanie Salinas Garcia told CNN. "This was a dinosaur that would stand, as an adult, about 15 feet tall and [weigh] close to seven tons."
Sauroposeidon tracks are visible on the opposite side of the park at the Denio site. These tracks were cleared off during the drought as well. The Sauroposeidon was a massive dinosaur that roamed the land north of what is now the Gulf of Mexico during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and its name means "lizard earthquake god," a reference to its gargantuan size and the earth shaking that paleontologists believed the dinosaur caused just by walking. It was among the biggest dinosaurs to have walked the Earth.
Jeff Davis, the park superintendent, told ABC News that the Paluxy River that runs through the park is what has helped preserve the dinosaur tracks.
An illustration showing how a human would've compared in size to the giant Sauroposeidon dinosaur.
"It's the river that will bring in silt and sediment and pile those on top of the tracks," Davis said to ABC News. "That's what preserves them; that's why they're still here after 113 million years or so."
Some dinosaur tracks can be uncovered depending on the weather conditions, like an ongoing drought, which is what made the Paluxy River run dry.
According to Davis, the park will sometimes intentionally cover some footprints to continue to preserve them. But other times, park rangers or volunteer crews will use a combination of water, leaf blowers and brooms to fully clean and clear out the dinosaur prints. This safe method allows crews to make the tracks visible to parkgoers while keeping them fully preserved.
A dinosaur track at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas. (Baker/Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park via Storyful)
As of Aug. 24, the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is in a state of exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The region also experienced a 67-day streak that ended on Aug. 10 during which no measurable rain fell, which is the second-longest such streak in the city's history. Earlier this week, severe flooding brought the Dallas/Fort Worth area to a standstill after a slow-moving storm unleashed record rainfall.
Prolonged drought has revealed other submerged relics as water levels on lakes and rivers have dropped across the globe. A number of human remains have been discovered in Lake Mead as water levels drop to historic levels in Arizona and Nevada.
As Italy faces the worst drought in at least 70 years, numerous relics, including a World War II-era barge, have emerged out of the Po River.
With rain in the forecast for Texas, the newly emerged dinosaur tracks will likely vanish and be buried again once the rain returns, UPI reported.
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