Ancient Humans Left Drawings Next to Dinosaur Footprints in Brazil
Petroglyphs were incised in rock near footprints of theropods, sauropods, and ornithopods.
By
Isaac Schultz
Published an hour ago
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https://tinyurl.com/5ey32auf
A petroglyph (left) and tridactyl dinosaur track (right), damaged by fracturing of the rock face.Photo: Troiano et al., Scientific Reports 2024
Ancient South Americans were apparently inspired by fossilized dinosaur tracks in what is now eastern Brazil, where they cut figures into the rock, imprinted tens of millions of years earlier by the movements of giants.
The dinosaur tracks belong to theropods, sauropods, and iguanodontians, and are spread across three rock outcroppings in the Brazilian state of Paraíba. The petroglyphs on the site consist primarily of circular patterns, but several look very much like the tridactyl dinosaur tracks also present on the site. The team’s research cataloguing the petroglyphs and associated trackways was published in Scientific Reports.
Neither the trackways nor the petroglyphs have been directly dated, but human burials dating to 10,000 years ago were previously found at two nearby sites. One of those sites, Pedra do Alexandre, has burials spanning from 9,400 years old to 2,620 years old, indicating there’s still a wide time frame in which the petroglyphs could have been carved. But the petroglyphs placement, and the design of some of the figures, was clearly inspired by the much more ancient trackways.
Theropods were a group of bipedal, often carnivorous creatures that includes T. rex and all modern birds. Sauropods were massive, herbivorous quadrupeds easily recognizable for their long necks, if not their huge bodies. Iguanodontians were a bipedal, herbivorous group that included the thumb-spiked, eponymous Iguanodon, as well as the duck-billed hadrosaurs.
More:
https://gizmodo.com/ancient-humans-drawings-dinosaur-footprints-brazil-1851366027
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