Over a thousand dinosaur footprints discovered in small Chilean town

• The small hamlet of Huatacondo in northern Chile now boasts the country’s highest concentration of dinosaur footprints.
• The find consists of more than a thousand prints left by theropod and sauropod dinosaurs that were born, grew, and reached adulthood 150 million years ago.

CHILE: The small hamlet of Huatacondo in northern Chile now boasts the country’s highest concentration of dinosaur footprints after a group of researchers recently found more than a thousand of them there.

“It’s remarkable and totally unheard of in my professional career. We discovered over a thousand footprints in just 10 days. Geologist Christian Salazar said, “We know there is enormous potential here and it is the start of a fantastic project.

Five professionals from Chile and abroad flew to the Tarapaca region in northern Chile from May 23 to June 3, where they discovered several hundred footprints spread out over 30 square kilometres after evaluating the data gathered by the Huatacondo community. There is still a lot to learn, according to experts.

Salazar, a researcher at the Universidad Mayor, a private university in Santiago, Chile’s capital city, said: “We have to continue gathering information, collecting data, and complementing what we already collected.”

The find consists of more than a thousand prints left by theropod and sauropod dinosaurs that were born, grew, and reached adulthood 150 million years ago.

The team discovered tracks that ranged in size from 80 centimetres to one metre, which suggests that the enormous animals may have reached a length of 12 metres. Xin Hua