Fossil track

A fossil track or ichnite (Greek "ἴχνιον" (ichnion) – a track, trace or footstep) is a fossilized footprint. This is a type of trace fossil. Over the years, many ichnites have been found around the world, giving important clues about the behavior, foot structure, and movement of the animals that made them. For example, multiple tracks from the same kind of animal close together can suggest that the animals moved together in groups.

Combinations of footprints from different species provide clues about how those species may have interacted with each other. Even a single set of footprints can tell scientists whether the animal walked on two legs or four. In this way, it has been suggested that some pterosaurs, when on the ground, might have used their front limbs in a surprising way.

Special conditions are needed to preserve a footprint made in soft ground, such as along a sea or lake shore that dries out and then gets covered by silt during a storm. The first ichnite was found in 1800 in Massachusetts, US, by a farmer named Pliny Moody. Famous discoveries include tracks found in a limestone quarry at Ardley, northeast of Oxford, England, in 1997, thought to have been made by Megalosaurus and possibly Cetiosaurus.

Fossil trackways

Many fossil trackways were made by dinosaurs, early tetrapods, and other quadrupeds and bipeds on land. Marine organisms also made many ancient trackways, such as the trails of trilobites and eurypterids like Hibbertopterus.

Some basic fossil trackway types include footprints, tail drags, belly drag marks, chains of trace platforms, and body imprints. Most fossil trackways are foot impressions on land or in shallow water, but other creatures also leave unique marks. For example, the fossil "millipede"-type genus Arthropleura left its many-legged trackways on land.

Hominid trackways

Africa

Tanzania

Some of the earliest trackways for human ancestors have been discovered in Tanzania. The Laetoli trackway is famous for the hominin footprints preserved in volcanic ash. After the footprints were made in soft ash, rain hardened the ash into tuff, keeping the prints safe. The hominid prints were made by three individuals, with one walking in the footprints of another.

South Africa

In South Africa, two ancient trackways with footprints have been found, one at Langebaan and one at Nahoon. Both trackways are in hardened sand dunes. At Nahoon, trackways of at least five species of vertebrates, including three hominid footprints, are preserved. The prints at Langebaan are the oldest human footprints, dating to about 117,000 years old.

Early Tetrapod

The earliest land creatures left some of the first tracks on land. These included tetrapods and other early reptiles.

Dinosaur trackways

Dinosaurs lived on the continents before grasses evolved. They lived during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods and left many trackways in mud and sand.

Bolivia

• Cal Orck'o, Cretaceous park, Sucre, Bolivia

From research starting in the 1960s, in December 2025, scientists found 16,600 footprints made by theropods, the group of dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. The footprints showed both very large dinosaurs about 10 meters tall and very small ones about the size of a chicken.

Brazil

• Valley of the Dinosaurs, Paraíba, Brazil

Africa

Namibia

In north-central Namibia, there is a dinosaur trackway on a private farm called Otjihaenamparero. The larger footprints are from a ceratosauria and the smaller ones from syntarsus. The prints are believed to be about 190 million years old.

Zimbabwe

In the Lower Zimbabwe Rift Valley, there is a trackway in 140 million-year-old sandstone. The small footprint size suggests it was made by a young dinosaur.

North America

The western parts of North America, especially near the western edge of the Western Interior Seaway, often have dinosaur trackways. Wyoming has trackways from the Late Cretaceous.

In the United States, dinosaur footprints and trackways are found in the Glen Rose Formation, most famously at the Paluxy River site in Dinosaur Valley State Park. These were the first sauropoda footprints ever studied and were named a US National Natural Landmark in 1969. Some prints are as large as about 3 feet across. There are tracks from two types of dinosaurs. One type is from a sauropod, perhaps a brachiosaurid such as Pleurocoelus, and the other from a theropoda, perhaps an Acrocanthosaurus. The tracks likely show twelve sauropods moving together, followed later by three theropods.

Other examples include:

• Dinosaur tracks, near Moab, Utah
• Dinosaur Footprints Reservation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, US
• Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite, Wyoming
• Prehistoric Trackways National Monument near Las Cruces, New Mexico
• Connecticut River Valley trackways, in New England
• Clayton Lake State Park dinosaur trackway near Clayton, New Mexico
• West Gold Hill Dinosaur Track in Uncompahgre National Forest near Ouray, Colorado

Asia

China

The Gansu dinosaur trackway in China contains hundreds of tracks, including many from different types of dinosaurs.

Thailand

The Phu Pha Man National Park in Thailand has one of the oldest dinosaur tracks found in Asia. Discovered in January 2024, the tracks are about 225–220 million years old and show many kinds of dinosaurs.

Australia

The Lark Quarry Trackway in Queensland has tracks made by a group of ornithopod dinosaurs. It was once thought to show a predator chasing smaller dinosaurs, but this idea was changed in 2011.

Europe

Portugal

• Lagosteiros Natural Monument, in Sesimbra, with theropod and ornithopod tracks from the Early Cretaceous.
• Aire Range Dinosaur Tracks Natural Monument near Torres Novas. In 1994, about 20 sauropod trackways from the Middle Jurassic were found.

England

In a limestone quarry in Ardley, Oxfordshire, more than 40 sets of footprints were discovered in 1997. These prints include tracks from theropods and sauropods. In 2024, five new trackways from about 166 million years ago were found nearby, including one made by a meat-eating theropod named Megalosaurus.

Mammal trackways

Mammal trackways are less common because mammals often lived in forests or grasslands, not in mud or rivers. The Walchia forest in Brule, Nova Scotia has an example of tetrapod trackways that passed through the forest.

United States

A trackway from the Late Pleistocene Age with footprints from humans, mammoths, and giant ground sloths was found at White Sands National Park near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Australia

A recent site at Colac in Victoria contains tracks from marsupials, kangaroos, and wallabies.

Pterosaur trackways

France

Pterosaur Beach was a mudflat at the end of the Jurassic era. It has hundreds of fossilized trackways from animals that lived there.

Gallery of images

• Cheirotherium trace fossil, displayed in Oxford University Museum of Natural History

• Cross-section of Pleistocene mammoth footprints at The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota

• Eubrontes, a dinosaur footprint in the Lower Jurassic Moenave Formation at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, southwestern Utah

• Fossil pterosaur footprints, Pterosaur Beach (France)

• Cameloid footprint (Lamaichnum alfi Sarjeant and Reynolds, 1999; convex hyporelief) from the Barstow Formation (Miocene) of Rainbow Basin, California

• Saurichnites intermedius

• A carnivorous theropod trackway from the Cretaceous near Enciso, La Rioja, Spain

• Petalichnus, arthropod walking traces. Devonian of northeastern Ohio.

• The main dinosaur trackway at the Lagosteiros Natural Monument, Portugal

• Moa footprints near the Manawatu River, New Zealand

• Hibbertopterus trackway: negative relief image, a groove infilled by sand appears as a ridgeline