150-Million-Year-Old Footprints of Limping Sauropod Dinosaur Found in Colorado
Paleontologists have analyzed an exceptionally long sauropod track at the West Gold Hill dinosaur track site in Colorado, US. Their results show that the giant dinosaur that made it may have limped.
Aerial view of the West Gold Hill dinosaur track site in Colorado, USA. Image credit: USDA Forest Service.
Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland, and his colleagues analyzed more than 130 footprints along the 95.5m track made 150 million years ago.
“This was left in the Late Jurassic when long-necked dinosaurs such as Diplodocus And Camarasaur traveled across North America,” Dr. Romilio said.
“This trail is unique because it is a complete loop.”
“Although we may never know why this dinosaur curled back on itself, the track offers an extremely rare chance to study how a giant sauropod managed a sharp looping turn before returning to its original direction of movement.”
“The scale of the West Gold Hill dinosaur track site required a new approach,” said Paul Murphey, a paleontologist at the San Diego Museum of Natural History.
“It was difficult to document these footprints from the ground due to the size of the track.”
“We used drones to capture the entire track in high resolution.”
“With these images, we generated a detailed 3D model, which could then be analyzed digitally in the laboratory with millimeter precision.”
The virtual model reconstructed the movement of the sauropod along the entire track.
“It was clear from the start that this animal started walking northeast, made a complete loop, and then finished in the same direction again,” Dr. Romilio said.
“In this loop, we found subtle, but consistent, clues about his behavior.”
“One of the clearest patterns was a variation in the width between the left and right footprints, going from quite narrow to noticeably wide.”
“This shift from narrow to wide step placement shows that the width of the footprint can change naturally as a dinosaur moves, meaning that short track segments with seemingly consistent widths can give a misleading picture of its usual walking style.”
“We also detected a small but persistent difference in left and right step length, of approximately 10 cm (4 inches).”
“It’s hard to say whether this reflects lameness or just a preference for one side.”
“There are many long dinosaur tracks around the world where this method could be applied to extract behavioral information that was previously inaccessible.”
The team’s paper was published in the journal Geomatics.
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Anthony Romilio and others. 2025. Track by Track: Revealing Sauropod Turning and Lateralized Gait at the West Gold Hill Dinosaur Track Site (Late Jurassic, Bluff Sandstone, Colorado). Geomatics 5 (4): 67; doi: 10.3390/geomatics5040067
