08/27/2026
Ninety three million years ago, a massive sauropod walked through soft limestone mud near what is now Glen Rose, Texas, and left a footprint that is still there today. 🦕
The Paluxy River cuts through Dinosaur Valley State Park, and when the water runs low during a hot Texas summer, the riverbed reveals rows of dinosaur tracks pressed into the rock so clearly you can count the toes. Paleontologists have been studying this site since the 1930s, when local fossil hunter Roland T. Bird first documented the trackway and shipped a section of it off to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Families have been wading out into that same river ever since, kids splashing right through footprints that were made before Texas was even land connected to the rest of North America.
What gets me every time is how ordinary the setting feels. It is just a shallow river with cypress trees and a few picnic tables, and then you look down and you are standing in the exact spot where something enormous walked before there were any humans anywhere on Earth to see it. The park has had to fight erosion, flooding, and decades of foot traffic to keep the tracks legible, and rangers now rope off the most fragile sections to protect them for whoever comes next.
Have you ever been to Dinosaur Valley, and if so, do you remember which trackway you saw first?
This post's image and text were created using AI.
