Q&A: Western prof discovers dinosaur footprints in South Africa

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 25, 2025 12:39 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 infinitesimal ago

A retired prof from Western University and his collaborators person identified footprints of dinosaurs successful South Africa that day backmost to the Cretaceous period. The 140-million-year-old tracks were identified by Guy Plint, a prof emeritus of world sciences, who travelled to the Western Cape state of South Africa successful October 2023.

Plint joined London Morning to speech astir the find with big Andrew Brown.

The pursuing has been edited for magnitude and clarity.

Andrew Brown: So, what took you to South Africa?

Guy Plint: It's a spot of a analyzable story. I had been moving for a fig of years successful bluish British Columbia with a workfellow who is primitively South African. He was a aesculapian doc but retired from medicine to survey dinosaur tracks successful British Columbia and South Africa.

In doing so, helium came crossed immoderate alternatively unusual rocks with peculiar deformation structures. These were Cretaceous-age rocks. Not truly being a geologist, much of a aesculapian man, helium realized determination was thing absorbing and got successful interaction with me. A twelvemonth later, taking vantage of my status from Western University and my state to travel, my woman and I went to South Africa to analyse them.

AB: What bash they look like?

GP: Well, they don't look similar tracks, and that's the thing. They had been antecedently documented successful South African lit arsenic earthquake-related formations. The layers lucifer what you'd expect if idiosyncratic had stepped connected brushed sediment—kind of squishy, deformed structures. But you don't spot them successful program view; you lone spot them successful vertical cliffs, wherever you get a cross-section. What you spot is simply a benignant of punch-down operation that tin beryllium implicit a metre across. Previous studies attributed them each to earthquakes.

AB: Whose prints are they?

GP: The size and signifier of the tracks powerfully suggest they were made by sauropods—those long-necked, long-tailed, massive-bodied dinosaurs with pillar-like legs. The astir apt campaigner is Brachiosaurus.

WATCH | Guy Plint talks dinosaur prints connected London Morning:

AB: How large would a Brachiosaurus be?

GP: There's immoderate statement astir their weight, but estimates scope betwixt 20 and 50 tons—absolutely massive. If you callback the opening dinosaur scenes successful Jurassic Park, they amusement 1 of these things rearing up and chewing the apical disconnected a tree, so those benignant of creatures.

AB: What is the value of uncovering these footprints successful South Africa?

GP: The grounds of dinosaurs successful South Africa is rather spotty. There's a bully way grounds from the Triassic (before 200 cardinal years ago) and the aboriginal Jurassic (up to astir 180 cardinal years ago). However, aft that, South Africa was uplifted, and monolithic volcanic eruptions took spot arsenic South America and South Africa were splitting apart, forming the South Atlantic.

During this period, overmuch of the onshore eroded, making it a mediocre situation for way preservation. Tracks request a subsiding sedimentary basin to accumulate layers of sediment portion animals locomotion crossed it, allowing tracks to beryllium preserved. In South Africa, astir of those basins are present nether the ocean. However, immoderate portions inactive beryllium connected land, and we examined 1 of these areas. After overmuch deliberation, we realized we were looking astatine sauropod tracks successful vertical cross-section, which is wherefore they don't instantly lucifer accepted tracks.

AB: That's incredible. What's it similar to recognize you're lasting successful beforehand of specified past tracks?

GP: These are 140-million-year-old tracks, and to beryllium honest, I went done respective cycles of self-doubt. I reviewed lit connected some dinosaur tracks and earthquake structures. Earthquakes tin make each sorts of antithetic formations—they fracture sediments, deform them, and make features similar soil dykes wherever worldly is forced upwards arsenic h2o escapes.

Interestingly, those earthquake-related structures are contiguous successful the area, but mixed successful with them are these chiseled "punch-down" structures wherever sediment layers person been sharply deformed downward. It's akin to what you'd spot erstwhile elephants trample brushed crushed astatine a waterhole. The layers get wholly squelched and deformed—except here, we spot it preserved successful cross-section.

AB: Can we larn thing astir dinosaur behaviour from these tracks?

GP: I deliberation we tin marque immoderate educated guesses. I'm a sedimentary geologist, not a way expert, truthful I had to larn astir tracks arsenic I went. The sediments were deposited successful a ample estuary—something similar a sandy Bay of Fundy. There's nary grounds of nutrient successful that environment—no trees oregon plants—so I fishy the dinosaurs whitethorn person wandered down the coast, gotten stuck connected a soil spit, and had to transverse tidal flats and channels to get backmost to the mainland, wherever the nutrient was.

In immoderate cases, the tracks suggest the dinosaurs were walking done abandoned, muddy tidal channels, sinking astatine slightest a metre into the sediment. Were they floundering? Having a mud bath? Wallowing successful the mud? We can't accidental for certain, but the tracks are decidedly there. What we bash cognize is that they weren't feeding—they were playing successful the mud.

AB: Relatable, isn't it?

GP: Absolutely! Some of the tracks are rather small, truthful possibly young dinosaurs were determination too—playing successful the mud, conscionable similar each kids do.