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Stunning 132 million-year-old dinosaur tracks are rewriting history

Date:

April 24, 2026

Source:

The Conversation

Summary:

A long-standing mystery in southern Africa’s fossil record is beginning to unravel. After massive lava flows 182 million years ago seemed to erase evidence of dinosaurs in the region, scientists have now uncovered surprising new clues along the Western Cape coast. Dozens of dinosaur tracks, about 132 million years old, have been discovered in a tiny stretch of rock near Knysna—making them the youngest ever found in southern Africa.

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Scientists have uncovered dozens of 132-million-year-old dinosaur tracks on South Africa’s coast, rewriting the region’s fossil timeline. The discovery reveals dinosaurs were still roaming here long after a massive volcanic event once thought to have erased their traces. Credit: AI/ScienceDaily.com

Southern Africa is famous for its rich record of prehistoric life, including dinosaurs. But around 182 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions spread lava across much of the inland Karoo Basin, where many dinosaurs once lived. After this event, the fossil record in the region becomes surprisingly quiet during the Jurassic Period (which lasted from 201 million to 145 million years ago).

Recent discoveries are beginning to change that picture. They show that dinosaurs continued to live in southern Africa long after those dramatic lava flows.

New Dinosaur Tracks on South Africa's Coast

In 2025, scientists reported dinosaur tracks about 140 million years old on a remote stretch of coastline in South Africa's Western Cape. These were the first tracks from that time period in the region (the Cretaceous, 145 million to 66 million years ago).

Now, researchers have uncovered even more evidence.

As ichnologists (studying fossil tracks and traces), the team regularly works along the Western Cape coast near Knysna. Most of their research focuses on tracks preserved in coastal aeolianites (cemented sand dunes) that are between 50,000 and 400,000 years old.

During a visit in early 2025, they explored a small outcrop of rock formed in the early Cretaceous Period. It is the only nearby exposure of rock from that time, and much of it is submerged at high tide. The team hoped they might find a theropod (dinosaur) tooth like one discovered there by a 13-year-old boy in 2017.

Instead, they found something far more exciting. Linda Helm, a member of the group, spotted dinosaur tracks. A closer look revealed more than two dozen possible footprints.

A Tiny Site With Big Significance

The Brenton Formation exposure is very small, measuring no more than 40 meters long and five meters wide, with cliffs rising up to five meters above the shore. Finding dozens of tracks in such a limited area suggests that dinosaurs were fairly common in this region during the Cretaceous.

The researchers estimate the tracks are about 132 million years old. That makes them the youngest known dinosaur tracks in southern Africa (50 million years younger than the youngest tracks reported from the Karoo Basin). They also represent only the second known set of Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in South Africa, and the second from the Western Cape. Some tracks are preserved on flat rock surfaces, while others appear in cross section within the cliffs.

Southern Africa's Dinosaur Fossil Record

Southern Africa holds an extensive record of vertebrate tracks and traces from the Mesozoic Era (the "Age of Dinosaurs," from 252 million to 66 million years ago, a time span that includes the Jurassic), especially in the Karoo Basin, which is filled with thick layers of sedimentary rock.

Tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods are common in Lesotho and nearby regions of South Africa, including the Free State and Eastern Cape.

However, later volcanic activity created the Drakensberg Group, covering many of these fossil-bearing layers with lava. Some dinosaurs may have briefly survived the initial eruptions, but they were likely among the last animals to live in the Karoo Basin at that time.

As the supercontinent Gondwana began to break apart near the end of the Jurassic Period and into the early Cretaceous Period, smaller basins formed in what are now the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. These areas contain limited deposits from the Cretaceous.

Body fossils from these deposits, mainly in the Eastern Cape, include a range of dinosaurs. Among them are the first dinosaur identified in the southern hemisphere, now known to be a stegosaur, along with sauropods, a coelurosaurian, and young iguanodontids.

In contrast, fossil remains from the Western Cape are rare. They include a few isolated sauropod teeth, scattered bones likely from a sauropod, and two finds near Knysna: the theropod tooth discovered earlier and part of a tibia.

Now, attention is turning to footprints instead of bones.

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