A remarkable fossil site in Bolivia has revealed more than 16,000 dinosaur footprints, offering one of the most detailed pictures ever found of how dinosaurs moved and behaved.
The discovery comes from a new study published in PLOS One by Raúl Esperante of the Geoscience Research Institute in California and his colleagues.
Their work focuses on the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Torotoro National Park, an area already famous for its rich collection of dinosaur tracks.
While Bolivia has many fossil sites filled with dinosaur footprints, a large number remain unstudied or unpublished.
The new research highlights just how impressive these sites can be.
At Carreras Pampas, the team documented thousands of tracks left by theropod dinosaurs—three-toed, mostly meat-eating species—during the final stage of the Cretaceous Period, around 66 million years ago.
The footprints vary widely in size, from very small prints less than 10 centimeters long to large ones over 30 centimeters.
They also capture a surprising variety of dinosaur actions. Some tracks show dinosaurs running; others record swimming strokes where the animals’ feet skimmed the sediment below shallow water.
There are also marks left by dragging tails and sudden sharp turns, creating a vivid picture of daily life along an ancient coastline.
The direction of the footprints adds even more detail. Many of them point northwest to southeast, and the surrounding rock preserves ripple marks from water, suggesting that dinosaurs were moving along the edge of a shoreline.
This was clearly a busy place for these animals. In fact, the site now holds world records for the number of individual footprints, the number of continuous walking paths, and the number of tail and swimming traces found in one location.
The abundance of tracks implies that this area was a heavily used route, possibly for feeding, traveling, or migrating.
The team also notes that some sets of footprints run in nearly parallel lines, hinting that certain dinosaurs may have been moving in groups. More research will be needed to confirm this behavior, but the clues are promising.
Even more footprints remain unstudied at this site, and the authors say Bolivia likely holds many additional tracksites waiting to be explored.
“This site is a stunning window into this area’s past—not just how many dinosaurs were moving through this area, but also what they were doing as they moved through,” Esperante explained. “It’s amazing working here, because everywhere you look, the ground is covered in dinosaur tracks.”
The discovery turns this Bolivian landscape into one of the world’s most exciting places to study dinosaur behavior, movement, and ancient environments.
