The footprints of dinosaurs can indicate speed, stance, environment, behavior and gait among other things. Details such as the skin structure of dinosaurs have also been revealed. Other revelations include the size of the dinosaur and what kind of material that dinosaur was moving around on. The footprints of dinosaurs hold much more information about the environment in which the dinosaurs lived than do the bones. In order to determine how the dinosaur stood, scientists often compare the footprints to the skeleton if both are available. Some dinosaur footprints show dinosaurs trampling nests or hunting down prey. Dinosaur footprints are usually examined for details like how many toes the dinosaur had, how big the footprint is, the shape of the foot and toe prints, how the toes are arranged, whether there are claws, what the heels look like, if the toes are webbed (indicating a swimmer) and how the skin may have looked.
Tracks of the Ankylosaurs have been discovered by scientists in the Rocky Mountains, giving clues about this dinosaur that lived over 100 million years ago. From looking at the tracks formed by the Ankylosaurs, it became evident that this dinosaur liked to eat plants in swamps. Other animal tracks like theropods and birds were never found in the same isolated areas but Ankylosaurs was found everywhere. The question as to what Ankylosaurs had that the others didn’t became important. Also, scientists were curious as to what the environment was like 70 million years ago. Ankylosaurs had four wide, spread out feet that would keep it from sinking into areas with abundant plants and swampy mud. Other dinosaurs could not travel through these areas because all of their weight was on two legs with narrow feet rather than four legs with wide feet. By noting that Anklysaurs was the only dinosaurs found in certain areas, its footprints were wide and it liked plants, it could be determined that those areas were most likely swamps 70 million years ago. |
