New Fossil Finds Rewrite Southern Africa’s Dinosaur Historical past
Paleontological fieldwork alongside South Africa’s Western Cape shoreline has revealed 132-million-year-old dinosaur footprints – the youngest Cretaceous-period tracks ever documented in southern Africa. These discoveries fill essential gaps in understanding dinosaur exercise following huge volcanic eruptions that beforehand obscured the fossil file.
Coastal Discovery
Throughout a 2025 coastal survey, researchers investigating historic sand formations close to Knysna made an sudden breakthrough. One group member excitedly reported discovering distinct impressions in rock formations that solely emerge throughout low tide. Subsequent examination recognized over two dozen dinosaur tracks preserved within the Brenton Formation’s wave-washed surfaces.
Geological Significance
The tracks date to the Early Cretaceous interval, roughly 50 million years youthful than earlier findings from the inland Karoo Basin. This discovery marks solely the second confirmed dinosaur observe website from South Africa’s Cretaceous period and gives proof that a number of dinosaur species thrived in coastal environments lengthy after volcanic exercise reshaped the area’s inside panorama.
“The focus of tracks on this small intertidal space suggests vital dinosaur exercise occurred right here,” said a lead researcher acquainted with the findings. The footprints had been preserved in what was doubtless a prehistoric river delta surroundings vastly totally different from right this moment’s developed shoreline.
Figuring out Historical Walkers
Evaluation signifies the impressions belong to a number of dinosaur varieties:
- Theropods (bipedal carnivores)
- Doable ornithopods (plant-eating bipeds)
- Potential sauropods (long-necked quadrupeds)
Whereas some observe options make exact classification difficult, researchers confirmed the range of species represented matches recognized Cretaceous dinosaur populations elsewhere in Africa.
New Analysis Horizons
This discovery builds on 2025 findings of 140-million-year-old tracks alongside the identical shoreline. Geological data point out a number of Cretaceous-era terrestrial deposits exist all through South Africa’s Western and Jap Cape provinces, suggesting further undiscovered fossil websites might await identification.
Scientists emphasize that systematic exploration of those geological formations might yield extra dinosaur stays, tracks, and doubtlessly different vertebrate traces that illuminate southern Africa’s ecological transition in the course of the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent.
