New fossil tracks reveal a hidden record of Cretaceous dinosaurs in southern Africa.
Southern Africa is widely recognized for its rich fossil record, preserving evidence of ancient life, including dinosaurs. However, around 182 million years ago, massive lava eruptions spread across much of the region, covering the inland Karoo Basin where dinosaurs once thrived.
Following this event, the fossil record of dinosaurs in the area becomes notably sparse throughout the Jurassic Period (which lasted from 201 million to 145 million years ago).
New discoveries reopen missing record
Recent findings are beginning to fill this long-standing gap, showing that dinosaurs continued to inhabit southern Africa well after these volcanic events.
In 2025, researchers reported dinosaur tracks dating to about 140 million years ago along a remote section of coastline in South Africa’s Western Cape province. These tracks marked the first evidence of dinosaurs in the region from the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).
Now, we’ve found more.
Fieldwork uncovers unexpected track site
Our work as a team of ichnologists (studying fossil tracks and traces) often takes us to the Knysna area of the Western Cape coast, where we investigate tracks in coastal aeolianites (cemented sand dunes) in the age range of 50,000 to 400,000 years old.
During one of these visits, early in 2025, we decided to visit a small patch of rock that formed during the early Cretaceous Period. It’s the only place in the vicinity where rock of this age is exposed, and much of it is underwater at high tide. We thought we might be lucky enough to find a theropod (dinosaur) tooth like the one discovered in those rocks by a 13-year-old boy in 2017.
We were pleasantly surprised when, instead, Linda Helm, a member of our party, told us in a state of excitement that she had found dinosaur tracks. Further examination of the deposits revealed more than two dozen probable tracks.
Small site reveals large presence
This so-called Brenton Formation exposure is tiny, no more than 40 meters in length and five meters in width, with cliffs rising from the shore to a maximum of five metres. To find dozens of tracks in this small area suggests a considerable dinosaur presence in the region during the Cretaceous.
In our study, we estimate that these tracks are 132 million years old, making them the youngest known dinosaur tracks in southern Africa (50 million years younger than the youngest tracks reported from the Karoo Basin). They form the second record of dinosaur tracks from the South African Cretaceous, and the second record from the Western Cape province. Some of them occur on rock surfaces, while others occur in the cliffs in profile.
Dinosaur fossil treasures
Southern Africa has a wealth of vertebrate tracks and traces from the Mesozoic Era (the “Age of Dinosaurs”, from 252 million to 66 million years ago, a time span that includes the Jurassic) in the Karoo Basin – a vast inland basin filled with thick piles of sedimentary deposits.
Dinosaur tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods are abundant in Lesotho and the surrounding areas in South Africa’s Free State and Eastern Cape provinces.
But vast quantities of lava, now referred to as the Drakensberg Group, overlaid these track-bearing deposits as a result of large-scale eruptions. A few dinosaurs appear to have briefly survived the initial effects of the lava flows, and were probably among the last vertebrates to inhabit the Karoo Basin.
Then, as the supercontinent of Gondwana fragmented at the end of the Jurassic Period and in the early Cretaceous Period, limited Cretaceous terrestrial deposits formed in rift basins in what are now the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa.
Dinosaur body fossils have been reported from those deposits, mostly from the Eastern Cape. They include the first dinosaur to be identified in the southern hemisphere, now identified as a stegosaur, as well as sauropods, a coelurosaurian and iguanodontid hatchlings and juveniles.
The only examples of dinosaur skeletal material from the Western Cape are a few isolated sauropod teeth, disarticulated bones of a probable sauropod, and two cases from the Knysna area: the theropod tooth mentioned above and a portion of a tibia.
But now we’re after their tracks.
Tracks reveal diverse dinosaur groups
The tracks we found at Knysna are in the modern intertidal zone, where the high tide covers most of them twice a day.
It would be difficult to imagine a more different scene, 132 million years ago, than the spectacular coastline, magnificent estuary, and lots of development by humans that we encounter today. Back in the early Cretaceous, many dinosaurs would have been visible in the area, perhaps inhabiting tidal channels or point bars (river beaches). The vegetation would also have been very different from that of today.
The Brenton Formation tracks were made by theropods, possibly ornithopods (both these kinds of dinosaur were bipedal, walking on two legs), and possibly sauropods (huge dinosaurs with very long necks and very long tails that were quadrupedal, walking on four legs). Theropods were meat eaters, while ornithopods and sauropods were plant eaters.
It can be challenging at times to distinguish theropod tracks from ornithopod tracks. Sauropod tracks are larger and don’t always have clear digit impressions, also sometimes making them hard to identify with confidence.
In most cases, we have chosen not to “over-interpret” which types of dinosaurs made which tracks, as they just aren’t clear enough. Our research paper simply intends to document that dinosaur tracks of this age are relatively plentiful in the Brenton Formation.
New sites suggest more discoveries ahead
The fact that early Cretaceous dinosaur tracks have now been identified in both the Robberg Formation and the Brenton Formation suggests that more may be found if a search is conducted in appropriate places. There are a number of other exposures of non-marine Cretaceous rocks in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. Systematic exploration of these deposits is now indicated, in the hope that in addition to finding more dinosaur skeletal material, more dinosaur tracks (and potentially those of other vertebrates) will be identified.
Reference: “Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in the Brenton Formation, Western Cape” by Charles W. Helm, Mark G. Dixon, Willo M. Stear and Fred Van Berkel, 29 January 2026, South African Journal of Science.
DOI: 10.17159/sajs.2026/22809
Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.
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