Ancient dinosaur footprints dating back 115 million years were discovered in Northwest Travis County, Texas, after recent flooding swept away layers of sediment and brush that had long hidden them, according to officials.
The discovery was made in the Big Sandy Creek area over the weekend by a group of volunteers, Travis County Judge Andy Brown, who serves as the county's chief executive, told ABC News. The tracks were found on private property, with the exact location being kept secret at the owner's request.
University of Texas paleontologists confirmed at least 15 individual footprints, Matthew Brown, a paleontologist at UT Austin, told ABC News. Each footprint measured approximately 18-20 inches long and dated back 110-115 million years, according to Brown.
There is a park a couple of counties SW of Fort Worth called Dinosaur Valley State Park that we visited often with the kids because we could look at dino tracks in the Glen Rose formation and play in the Paluxy River.
A volunteer helping residents clear debris discovered 15 large, three-clawed dinosaur footprints scattered in a crisscross pattern along the Sandy Creek area. “The tracks that are unambiguously dinosaurs were left by meat-eating dinosaurs similar to Acrocanthosaurus, a roughly 35-foot-long bipedal carnivore,” said Matthew Brown, a paleontologist with the Jackson School Museum of Earth History at the University of Texas at Austin. The tracks are approximately 110 to 115 million years old and each footprint is roughly 18 to 20 inches long, according to Brown. Waterways like the Sandy Creek “cut through the Glen Rose Formation limestone, which is the rock layer that bears the tracks and is about 110ish million years old,” Brown said. “And so, that’s how we know how old the dinosaur tracks are, it’s because they’re preserved in rock layers that are that old.”