Scientists find first adult T. rex trackway in North Dakota
Four footprints in southwestern North Dakota make up the first known trackway left by an adult T. rex. The trail runs about 23 feet, with each footprint roughly 3 feet long. Researchers found the tracks in 2025 near Marmarth, on federal land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and estimate they were made about 66.5 million years ago. Scientists have attributed isolated footprints to adult T. rex before, but never a full sequence of tracks. "Bones tell us an enormous amount about these animals, but footprints capture a moment of behavior," said Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. "With a trackway, we can actually follow an animal as it moved across the landscape." The team used high-resolution 3D surface scanning to document each footprint, producing digital models that let researchers study the tracks closely and build physical 3D reproductions.
Fossil bones show what T. rex looked like, but a trackway records how one actually walked, giving researchers a rare look at real movement rather than reconstructed motion.
Source: Denver Museum of Nature & Science discovers first-ever adult T. rex trackway (dmns.org).
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