Guy Plint is no stranger to tracking prehistoric beasts. Over the past 40 years, the Western University Earth Sciences professor has studied the Cretaceous rocks of Alberta and British Columbia finding conclusive traces of dinosaurs like the armored ankylosaurus, Deinosuchus (a giant ancestor of the modern crocodile), and most recently, the world's oldest heron-like bird.
Now, Plint and his collaborators have identified footprints of Cretaceous dinosaurs in South Africa for the first time ever, the majority most likely produced by brachiosaurs. These tracks were found in a remote coastal setting in the Robberg Nature Reserve, a protected area that lies south of Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Although the rocks had been studied previously, the tracks had not been recognized because the rocks formed vertical cliffs, so most tracks were seen along the cross-section, and it was not possible to see the impressions of toes that people usually use to identify a footprint.
