Photo: DINOSAUR VALLEY PARK/PAUL BAKER / copyright
Drought has exposed an amazing find in the southern United States.
They are traces of dinosaur from ago 60 millions of years that, according to the first studies of the experts, remained recorded in the bed of a river in the state of Texas that has almost dried up.
The big marks correspond to the footprint of a A crocanthosaurus and had remained hidden under various layers of sediment.
They were found in the state park Dinosaur Valley (Valley of the dinosaurs), in central Texas, and are some of the best preserved in the world , Superintendent Jeff Davis said.
Nearly the entire state is facing a prolonged shortage of rain, according to the M US Drought Monitor Last week, the 87% of Texas acreage was experiencing one of the three most severe drought categories: severe, extreme, and exceptional.
Excessively dry and hot summer conditions caused a river that runs through the park to dry up almost completely. complete, revealing the footprints of the dinosaurs.
Davis told the BBC that the footprints found have been dubbed “the path of the Lone Ranger” and that belongs to a dinosaur of the Acrocanthosaurus species that walked there.
It is estimated that there is a total of 140 footprints of this dinosaur, of which 44 have been exposed for about 30 meters.
Slabcrocanthosaurs were therapods, that is, a “typical three-toed dinosaur”, explained Davis. With a height of about 4.5 meters, they would have weighed about seven tons.
These dinosaurs probably fed on the Sauroposeidon
, another species whose tracks have also been found in the same state park.
The Sauroposeidon measure up to meters tall, had a long neck and weighed about 44 tons when fully grown.
Extreme weather has also led to another surprise in the US
At Lake Mead, in Nevada, human remains have been uncovered in the reservoir (the largest in the country ) as water levels have decreased.
And in Europe they have been exposed cough vestiges of the Second World War and ancient towns that were left under water.
Not all droughts are due to climate change, but the excess heat in the atmosphere is accelerating the extraction of a greater amount of moisture of the earth and has worsened droughts.
The world has already warmed by about 1.2 ° C since the Industrial Age began and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world drastically reduce emissions, scientists warn.
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