Lost Dinosaur Footprints Found on South Africa's Coastline
Newly discovered tracks reveal the animals survived far longer in the region than previously believed. Scientists have uncovered what appears to be the largest collection of dinosaur footprints ever found in Southern Africa, dramatically rewriting our understanding of prehistoric life in the region.
Silence Broken After Millions of Years
Southern Africa is world-renowned for its fossil record of creatures that lived in the very distant past, including dinosaurs. However, about 182 million years ago, a huge eruption of lava covered much of the landscape where most of the dinosaurs roamed. This event, known as the Drakensberg Group lava flows, effectively silenced the dinosaur fossil record in the region for the Jurassic Period, which lasted from 201 million to 145 million years ago.
Two exciting recent discoveries have now confirmed that there is much more to find regarding dinosaurs that lived in southern Africa long after those catastrophic lava flows. First, dinosaur tracks aged around 140 million years were reported in 2025 on a remote stretch of the coast in South Africa's Western Cape province. These were the first to be found in the region from that geological time period, known as the Cretaceous, which spanned from 145 million to 66 million years ago.
Remarkable Discovery During Routine Research
Now, researchers have found even more evidence. A team of ichnologists, scientists who study fossil tracks and traces, regularly visits the Knysna area of the Western Cape coast to investigate tracks in coastal aeolianites, which are cemented sand dunes dating between 50,000 and 400,000 years old.
During one of these visits early in 2025, the team decided to examine a small patch of rock that formed during the early Cretaceous Period. This is the only place in the vicinity where rock of this age is exposed, and much of it is underwater at high tide. The researchers initially hoped they might be lucky enough to find a theropod dinosaur tooth similar to one discovered in those rocks by a 13-year-old boy in 2017.
Instead, they were pleasantly surprised when Linda Helm, a member of their party, excitedly announced she had found dinosaur tracks. Further examination of the deposits revealed more than two dozen probable tracks, creating a remarkable concentration of evidence in a tiny area.
Significant Concentration in Small Area
The so-called Brenton Formation exposure where these tracks were found is remarkably small, measuring no more than 40 metres in length and five metres in width, with cliffs rising from the shore to a maximum of five metres. To find dozens of tracks in this limited area suggests a considerable dinosaur presence in the region during the Cretaceous period.
In their study, researchers estimate that these tracks are approximately 132 million years old, making them the youngest known dinosaur tracks in southern Africa. Remarkably, they are 50 million years younger than the youngest tracks previously reported from the Karoo Basin. These newly discovered tracks form the second record of dinosaur tracks from the South African Cretaceous period and the second record from the Western Cape province.
Southern Africa's Rich Fossil Heritage
Southern Africa has a wealth of vertebrate tracks and traces from the Mesozoic Era, commonly known as the "Age of Dinosaurs," which spanned from 252 million to 66 million years ago. This time period includes the Jurassic era. Dinosaur tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods are abundant in Lesotho and surrounding areas in South Africa's Free State and Eastern Cape provinces.
However, vast quantities of lava from the Drakensberg Group eruptions overlaid these track-bearing deposits. A few dinosaurs appear to have briefly survived the initial effects of the lava flows and were probably among the last vertebrates to inhabit the Karoo Basin.
Changing Landscape and Continental Shifts
As the supercontinent of Gondwana fragmented at the end of the Jurassic Period and in the early Cretaceous Period, limited Cretaceous terrestrial deposits formed in rift basins in what are now the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa.
Dinosaur body fossils have been reported from those deposits, mostly from the Eastern Cape. They include the first dinosaur to be identified in the southern hemisphere, now identified as a stegosaur, as well as sauropods, a coelurosaurian, and iguanodontid hatchlings and juveniles.
The only examples of dinosaur skeletal material from the Western Cape are a few isolated sauropod teeth, disarticulated bones of a probable sauropod, and two cases from the Knysna area: the theropod tooth mentioned earlier and a portion of a tibia. Now, researchers have significantly expanded this evidence through track discoveries.
Knysna's Prehistoric Environment
The tracks found at Knysna are located in the modern intertidal zone, where the high tide covers most of them twice a day. This creates challenging conditions for researchers but preserves remarkable evidence of prehistoric life.
It would be difficult to imagine a more different scene 132 million years ago compared to today's spectacular coastline, magnificent estuary, and human development. Back in the early Cretaceous, many dinosaurs would have been visible in the area, perhaps inhabiting tidal channels or river beaches known as point bars. The vegetation would also have been dramatically different from that of today.
Identifying the Track Makers
The Brenton Formation tracks were made by theropods, possibly ornithopods, and potentially sauropods. Both theropods and ornithopods were bipedal dinosaurs that walked on two legs, while sauropods were huge dinosaurs with very long necks and tails that were quadrupedal, walking on four legs. Theropods were meat eaters, while ornithopods and sauropods were plant eaters.
It can be challenging at times to distinguish theropod tracks from ornithopod tracks. Sauropod tracks are larger and don't always have clear digit impressions, which sometimes makes them difficult to identify with confidence. In most cases, researchers have chosen not to "over-interpret" which types of dinosaurs made which tracks, as they just aren't clear enough. The research paper primarily documents that dinosaur tracks of this age are relatively plentiful in the Brenton Formation.
Future Exploration Potential
The fact that early Cretaceous dinosaur tracks have now been identified in both the Robberg Formation and the Brenton Formation suggests that more may be found if systematic searches are conducted in appropriate locations. There are a number of other exposures of non-marine Cretaceous rocks in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.
Systematic exploration of these deposits is now indicated, with researchers hoping that in addition to finding more dinosaur skeletal material, more dinosaur tracks and potentially those of other vertebrates will be identified. This discovery opens new avenues for understanding the distribution and survival of dinosaurs in southern Africa long after the catastrophic lava flows that were previously thought to have eliminated them from the region.
About the authors: Charles Helm and Willo Stear are both Research Associates for the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
