{"id":304070,"date":"2025-07-30T14:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T14:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/304070\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T14:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T14:04:14","slug":"paleontologists-discover-first-evidence-of-multispecies-dinosaur-herding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/304070\/","title":{"rendered":"Paleontologists Discover First Evidence of Multispecies Dinosaur Herding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paleontologists say they have discovered the 76-million-year-old footprints of a ceratopsian dinosaur-dominated herd in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. The discovery provides the first evidence of mixed-species herding behavior in dinosaurs, similar to how modern wildebeest and zebra travel together on the African plains.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A herd of ceratopsians (Styracosaurus albertensis) accompanied by an ankylosaur (Euplocephalus tutus) walk through an old river channel under the watchful eyes of two tyrannosaurs (Gorgosaurus libratus). Image credit: Julius Csotonyi.<\/p>\n

Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, Canada, is unquestionably one of the premier localities worldwide for understanding Late Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems.<\/p>\n

The Park has yielded hundreds of dinosaur skeletons and huge numbers of bones and teeth, making it a model system for understanding dinosaur evolution, behavior, biostratigraphy, and paleoecology.<\/p>\n

Despite the remarkable abundance of skeletal elements, dinosaur footprints and trackways are surprisingly rare.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2024, we discovered a new tracksite, the Skyline Tracksite comprising \u2018typical\u2019 natural mould tracks, which had heretofore not been identified in the Park,\u201d said University of New England\u2019s Dr. Phil Bell and colleagues.<\/p>\n

At the site, the paleontologists unearthed 13 ceratopsian (horned dinosaur) tracks from at least five animals walking side by side, with a probable ankylosaurid (armored dinosaur) walking in the midst of the others.<\/p>\n

They were also surprised to find the tracks of two large tyrannosaurs walking side-by-side and perpendicular to the herd, raising the prospect that the multispecies herding may have been a defence strategy against common apex predators. One footprint of a small meat-eating dinosaur was also discovered.<\/p>\n

\"Views<\/a><\/p>\n

Views of the Skyline Tracksite shortly after discovery (A) and following excavation (B). Image credit: Bell et al., doi: 10.1371\/journal.pone.0324913.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve collected dinosaur bones in Dinosaur Provincial Park for nearly 20 years, but I\u2019d never given footprints much thought,\u201d Dr. Bell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis rim of rock had the look of mud that had been squelched out between your toes, and I was immediately intrigued.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tyrannosaur tracks give the sense that they were really eyeing up the herd, which is a pretty chilling thought, but we don\u2019t know for certain whether they actually crossed paths.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was incredibly exciting to be walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs 76 million years after they laid them down,\u201d said Dr. Brian Pickles from the University of Reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing the new search images for these footprints, we have been able to discover several more tracksites within the varied terrain of the Park, which I am sure will tell us even more about how these fascinating creatures interacted with each other and behaved in their natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis discovery shows just how much there is still to uncover in dinosaur paleontology,\u201d said Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology\u2019s Dr. Caleb Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cDinosaur Park is one of the best understood dinosaur assemblages globally, with more than a century of intense collection and study, but it is only now that we are getting a sense for its full potential for dinosaur trackways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery is described in a paper<\/a> in the journal PLoS ONE.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

P.R. Bell et al. 2025. A ceratopsid-dominated tracksite from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Campanian) at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. PLoS One 20 (7): e0324913; doi: 10.1371\/journal.pone.0324913<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paleontologists say they have discovered the 76-million-year-old footprints of a ceratopsian dinosaur-dominated herd in Dinosaur Provincial Park in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6934,111930,943,111931,111932,36136,111933,55223,111934,1505,20450,35791,300,70,111935,111936,111937,111938,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-304070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-ankylosauridae","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-ceratopsia","12":"tag-ceratopsidae","13":"tag-cretaceous","14":"tag-dinosaur-provincial-park","15":"tag-footprint","16":"tag-footprints","17":"tag-fossil","18":"tag-herd","19":"tag-herding","20":"tag-north-america","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-skyline-tracksite","23":"tag-theropod","24":"tag-tyrannosaur","25":"tag-tyrannosauridae","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114942566394288466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}