🌅 The First Adult T. rex Trackway Known to Science

SOURCE

Falkingham et al. (2026)

WHAT TO KNOW

• A high school teacher and amateur fossil hunter from Colorado recently discovered a 23-foot-long trackway left behind by a Tyrannosaurus rex as it hulked its way across the forested landscape of modern-day North Dakota some 66.5 million years ago. The trackway consists of four three-toed footprints—two left and two right footprints—each around three feet long and spaced 13 feet apart, including one footprint that appears to contain an impression of a claw. Based on the stride length and size of the footprints, researchers from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science—who led the dig the high school teacher was volunteering on—estimate the T. rex was walking approximately 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour. The researchers believe the discovery could reveal new insights into how T. rex moved, how their feet were structured, and even what their skin was like.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The collection of footprints represent the first adult T. rex trackway known to science. Prior to the present study, only two individual adult T. rex footprints had ever been discovered, one in New Mexico and the other in Montana. The authors of the present study are convinced the newly uncovered tracks belong to a T. rex based on the size, shape, and location of the footprints, which were found in an area where numerous T. rex bones have been uncovered.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The trackway was encased in 66- to 68-million-year-old layers of rock collectively known as the Hell Creek Formation. The formation—which spans eastern Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming—has revealed several significant T. rex finds over the years, including Sue, the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered (now housed at Chicago’s Field Museum), and “Teen Rex,” a juvenile T. rex discovered by a group of children in 2022. Other Hell Creek Formation finds include Gus, the T. rex fossil that sold for a record $50.1 million in July 2026, and Stan, another T. rex skeleton which sold for $31.8 million in 2020 and now resides at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi in the U.A.E.