First known adult T-rex footprints discovered after 66 million years – by a schoolteacher in North Dakota
The 23ft-long trackway contains four three-toed prints and offers rare evidence of how the giant predator moved
A schoolteacher has stumbled across what's thought to be the world's first known series of footprints from an adult T-Rex.
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Four huge three-toed prints were found by Colorado schoolteacher Kent Hups whilst he was hiking in North Dakota and are thought to be more than 66 million years old.
The 23ft (7 metres) long trackway – consisting of four three-toed footprints, two left and two right, roughly 3.3 feet long (0.91 metres)- was first identified last year in the dinosaur fossil area known as Hell Creek Formation, in the south-west of the state.
Researchers from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and Liverpool John Moores University carried out the work, and their findings have now been made public.
Although individual footprints and tracks from juvenile T-Rex's have been discovered before, this is the first time a continuous trail from an adult has been found.
Hups said: "As a teacher, I'm always telling my students that science starts with curiosity, passion and careful observation.
"I never imagined that could lead me to a discovery like this."
Tyler Lyson, a senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, said:
"With a trackway, we can actually follow an animal as it moved across the landscape."That is incredibly rare for T Rex.
"Bones tell us an enormous amount about these animals, but footprints capture a moment of behaviour."
The researcher used high-resolution 3D surface scanning to create physical 3D reproductions of the footprints.
From this, they were able to make a rough estimate that the animal was walking about 3.5- 4.5 mph – about the same as a brisk human walking pace, with a stride of about 3.96 metres.
The prehistoric imprints were preserved when sandstone solidified around the depressions they made, turning them into fossils.
With T-Rex remains in the surrounding area, the researchers concluded that the tracks belonged to the species.
Three of the footprints are set to be recovered by helicopter later this year and transported to the museum in Denver.
The iconic T-Rex roamed the Earth about 66- 68 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.
At 12 to 13 feet tall (3-4 metres), it was one of the last non-flying dinosaurs alive before a catastrophic mass extinction event brought their reign to an end.