page_title: Fossil trackway
section_title: North America
hierarchical_section_title: Fossil trackway / Dinosaur trackways / North America
caption_attribution_description: English: Dinosaur Valley State Park, near Glen Rose Texas, ninety minutes' drive southwest of Dallas. The many prints in the shallow river include both carnivorous dinosaurs and plant-eating dinosaurs.
context_page_description: A fossil trackway is a type of trace fossil, a trackway made by an organism. Many fossil trackways were made by dinosaurs, early tetrapods, and other quadrupeds and bipeds on land. Marine organisms also made many ancient trackways.
  Some basic fossil trackway types:
  footprints
  tail drags
  belly drag marks –
  chain of trace platforms –
  body imprint –
  The majority of fossil trackways are foot impressions on land, or subsurface water, but other types of creatures will leave distinctive impressions. Examples of creatures supported, or partially supported, in a water environment are known. The fossil "millipede-type" genus Arthropleura left its multi-legged/feet trackways on land.
context_section_description: The western regions of North America, especially the western border of the Western Interior Seaway, are common for dinosaur trackways. Wyoming has dinosaur trackways from the Late Cretaceous, 65 ma. (A model example of this 3-toed Wyoming trackway was made for presentation.)
  In the United States, dinosaur footprints and trackways are found in the Glen Rose Formation, the most famous of these being the Paluxy River site in Dinosaur Valley State Park.  These were the first sauropoda footprints scientifically documented, and were designated a US National Natural Landmark in 1969. Some are as large as about 3 feet across.  The prints are thought to have been preserved originally in a tidal flat or a lagoon.  There are tracks from two types of dinosaur.  The first type of tracks are from a sauropoda and were made by an animal of 30 to 50 feet in length, perhaps a brachiosaurid such as Pleurocoelus, and the second tracks by a theropoda, an animal of 20 to 30 feet in length, perhaps an Acrocanthosaurus.  A variety of scenarios was proposed to explain the tracks, but most likely represent twelve sauropods "probably as a herd, followed somewhat later by three theropods that may or may not have been stalking -- but that certainly were not attacking."  
  Dinosaur tracks, near Moab, Utah
  Dinosaur Footprints Reservation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA
  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
caption: Theropod and sauropod tracks under water in the Paluxy River
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