wunder beta🐾 Reading Dinosaur Footprints
Dinosaurs left footprints that turned to stone. Learn how scientists read these tracks like a detective to figure out a dinosaur's size, speed, and even whether it traveled in a herd.
What you’ll learn
- Frozen FootstepsUnderstand that footprints are trace fossils and how they form.Dinosaur footprints are trace fossils, records of what a dinosaur did rather than parts of its body. A footprint forms when a dinosaur steps in soft mud that dries, gets buried, and turns to stone. A line of prints from one dinosaur is called a trackway.
- What Footprints Tell UsExplain how footprint size, shape, and spacing reveal a dinosaur's size, walk, and speed.Footprints are full of clues. A bigger print means a bigger dinosaur, two lines of three-toed prints mean a two-legged walker, four round prints mean a four-legged one, and the gap between prints shows whether the dinosaur was walking or running.
- Reading a TrackwayInterpret a trackway for herd behavior and learn that dinosaurs held their tails up.Many trackways side by side, all heading the same way, show that dinosaurs sometimes traveled in herds. Trackways also almost never have a tail-drag line, which taught scientists that dinosaurs held their tails up off the ground.
Questions this course answers
What kind of fossil is a dinosaur footprint?
A footprint is a trace fossil because it records what a dinosaur did, not part of its body.
What does a dinosaur first step into for a footprint to fossilize?
A footprint starts when a dinosaur steps in soft, wet mud that later dries and hardens.
What does the size of a footprint usually tell us?
A bigger footprint usually means a bigger dinosaur made it.
How can you tell if a dinosaur walked on two legs?
Two-legged dinosaurs, often meat-eaters, left two lines of three-toed footprints.
Footprints spread far apart tell us the dinosaur was doing what?
Prints far apart mean long, quick strides, so the dinosaur was running.
What do many trackways side by side, all going the same way, suggest?
Many parallel trackways heading the same direction suggest a herd of dinosaurs traveling together.
Grounded in trusted sources
- Natural History Museum (London)
- Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
- American Museum of Natural History
- Britannica Kids
Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.
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