Near identical dinosaur footprints found 3,700 miles apart revealing new clue about Earth 120million years ago
TWO sets of dinosaur footprints that are “almost identical” have been uncovered 3,700 miles apart providing fresh evidence about how Earth looked some 120million years ago.
Experts found more than 260 footprints in Brazil and in Cameroon.
Today the two countries are separated by the Atlantic Ocean.
But about 120million years ago, dinosaurs were able to walk freely across a vast area which included present-day’s South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica.
It all formed part of an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana.
The matching footprint discovery is another clue suggesting that both sides were once connected.
They were found all these years later in mud and silt along prehistoric rivers and lakes.
“We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar,” said Louis L. Jacobs, a paleontologist from Southern Methodist University (SMU).
“In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar.
“In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical.”
Africa and South America started to split around 140million years ago.
It was triggered by the movement of the tectonic plates beneath them, causing magma to rise and create a new oceanic crust.
Over millions of years, the African and South American plates continued to drift apart at a rate of a few centimetres per year.
Eventually, the South Atlantic Ocean filled the space between the two.
“One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea,” Jacobs continued, reports Phys.org.
“The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it.”
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here's what you need to know...
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event