T. rex walked across North America 66.5 million years ago, fossil tracks show

For decades, paleontologists have studied Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) through bones, teeth and isolated footprints. Those fossils reveal what the animal looked like, how large it was and what it may have eaten, but they rarely show the creature in motion. That changed with the discovery of a short trail in southwestern North Dakota. Four enormous three-toed footprints, pressed into mud about 66.5 million years ago, form the first known trackway attributed to an adult T. rex. The spacing between the prints suggests that the animal was moving at roughly 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour, a pace comparable to a brisk human walk. As reported by The Guardian and Good Good News Network, the find offers an unusually direct glimpse of a giant predator simply walking across the ancient landscape.A trail preserved in ancient mudThe trackway was found in the Hell Creek Formation, a fossil rich region that stretches across parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. During the late Cretaceous Period, this landscape looked very different from the modern badlands. Rivers crossed broad floodplains, forests grew along their banks and dinosaurs moved through a warm environment near the Western...