Scientists Find First Adult T. Rex Trackway – And The Footprints Are Human-Sized - ScienceAlert

Paleontologists have documented the first known trackway made by an adult Tyrannosaurus rex, discovered in what is now North Dakota and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Falkingham et al.

Study co-author Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, emphasized that while bones reveal anatomy, footprints capture a moment of behavior, allowing researchers to follow the animal as it moved—something extremely rare for T. rex.

Until now, scientists had only found a couple of isolated T. rex footprints—not connected tracks—previously unearthed in New Mexico and Montana, making this continuous footpath uniquely informative.

The trackway was dated to approximately 66.5 million years ago, just before the asteroid strike that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and ushered in the Paleocene epoch.

The path stretches about 7 meters (23 feet) and preserves four footprints, each roughly 1 meter (3.2 feet) long and up to 0.80 meters wide, comparable in scale to a human.

Researchers note that trackways and skeletal remains are rarely found together because they require different preservation conditions, and tridactyl tracks can be difficult to attribute given the similarities between carnivorous theropods and herbivorous ornithopods.