Scientists document over 16,000 footprints in the world’s most extensive dinosaur tracksite

Three-toed, bipedal meat-eating dinosaurs known as theropods left their mark at the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Bolivia. Jeremy McLarty

A high-traffic “dinosaur freeway” may have once stretched across a shoreline in what is now Bolivia. Traveling along this busy route were theropods — three-toed, bipedal meat-eating dinosaurs, which left behind thousands of fossil footprints. Paleontologists have now described their tracks for the first time, offering a rare glimpse into dinosaurs’ movements through their habitat.

Scientists recently counted 16,600 theropod tracks — more than any other trackway site — at the Carreras Pampas tracksite in Bolivia’s Torotoro National Park. There the theropods stamped their feet into the soft, deep mud between 101 million and 66 million years ago, toward