The severe drought that plagued Texas this year has led to the exposure of 113 million-year-old dinosaur tracks on a riverbed in central Texas.
A BBC report detailed “The massive tracks, which belonged to a single Acrocanthosaurus, had not been seen since 2000, as they sat under water and several layers of sediment.
The tracks at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas are some of the best preserved in the world, said park superintendent Jeff Davis.
Almost all of Texas is facing a drought according to the US Drought Monitor.
Last week, more than 87% of the state was experiencing one of the three most serious drought categories – severe, extreme and exceptional.
The summer’s excessively dry, hot conditions caused a river in the central Texas park to dry out almost entirely, revealing the dinosaur tracks.
Superintendent Davis told the BBC that the recently exposed tracks are called the “Lone Ranger trackway”, belonging to one Acrocanthosaurus, who walked that trail for about 100ft. There are an estimated 140 tracks in total from this one dinosaur, with about 60 visible now.
Extreme weather has also led to other surprises.
Human remains have been discovered in Lake Mead – the largest US reservoir – as water levels decline.
And in Europe, receding water levels have revealed “hunger stones” engraved at the waterline of rivers during previous droughts as a warning to future generations that when the stones are above water, suffering lies ahead.
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