A prehistoric "highway" used by dinosaurs to travel between Africa and South America has been discovered by paleontologists, according to new research reported by CNN.

The study, published by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, reveals that matching sets of dinosaur footprints found on both continents indicate a shared migration route that existed approximately 120 million years ago, before the two landmasses split apart.

Louis L. Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas and lead author of the study, explained the significance of the discovery. "One of the youngest and narrowest geological connections between Africa and South America was the elbow of northeastern Brazil nestled against what is now the coast of Cameroon along the Gulf of Guinea," Jacobs said. "The two continents were continuous along that narrow stretch, so that animals on either side of that connection could potentially move across it."

Researchers have identified over 260 dinosaur footprints from the Early Cretaceous Period in Brazil and Cameroon, now separated by more than 3,700 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. The majority of these fossilized prints were created by three-toed theropod dinosaurs, with a few likely belonging to sauropods or ornithischians, according to study coauthor Diana P. Vineyard, a research associate at SMU.

The footprints were preserved in mud and silt along ancient rivers and lakes that existed on the supercontinent Gondwana. As Africa and South America began to separate about 140 million years ago, the rifting process created ideal conditions for preserving these prehistoric traces.

A team of paleontologists found matching dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents, separated by thousands of miles of ocean.

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 "Plants fed the herbivores and supported a food chain," Jacobs explained. "Muddy sediments left by the rivers and lakes contain dinosaur footprints, including those of meat-eaters, documenting that these river valleys could provide specific avenues for life to travel across the continents 120 million years ago."

The study authors found evidence of half-graben basins – elongated depressions formed by tectonic activity – in northeast Brazil's Borborema region and the Koum Basin in northern Cameroon. These basins contained not only dinosaur tracks but also ancient river and lake sediments and fossilized pollen, painting a picture of a lush, tropical environment.

While it's challenging to identify specific dinosaur species from footprints alone, the tracks provide valuable insights into dinosaur behavior and movement patterns. "Dinosaur tracks are not rare, but unlike the bones usually found, footprints are the proof of dinosaur behavior, how they walked, ran or otherwise, who they walked with, what environment they walked through, what direction they were going, and where they were when they were doing it," Jacobs noted.

The discovery of this prehistoric migration route sheds light on how continental drift influenced the evolution and distribution of dinosaur species. As the continents separated, the break in genetic continuity likely drove evolutionary changes among previously connected populations.

The research builds on decades of work, including initial discoveries of dinosaur tracks in Cameroon in the late 1980s. Jacobs and his colleague, Ismar de Souza Carvalho, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, have been studying dinosaur movements from the African and Brazilian perspectives, respectively.

"We wanted to put new and evolving geological and paleontological evidence together to tell a story more specifically of where and why and when dispersals between the continents happened," Jacobs said, highlighting the collaborative nature of the research.

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The asteroid believed to have killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was likely a rare carbonaceous asteroid, composed mainly of water, clay, and organic compounds, originating from the outer solar system, possibly beyond the orbit of Jupiter, according to a new study.

Geoscientists from the University of Cologne aimed to determine the origin of the Chicxulub impactor, which left a massive crate on Mexico coast line, with its center now underwater.

The findings suggest the event was extremely rare—the asteroid is the single recorded celestial body to have hit Earth over the last 500 million years that was water-rich.

The Chicxulub asteroid impact is widely accepted as the primary cause of the mass extinction event that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs and marked the end of the Cretaceous period.

The asteroid was estimated to be between 6 and 12 miles in diameter and traveled at a speed of 15.5 miles per second, creating a massive dust cloud that blocked sunlight and contributed to the global cooling and mass extinction.

The impact produced a global stratigraphic layer containing elevated concentrations of platinum-group elements, including ruthenium, marking the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene eras.

NASA and other space agencies are working to catalog dangerous asteroids to enhance Earth's defense strategies against potential future impacts.

Sources: NBC News, Smithsonian Magazine, USA Today, CNN, Fox News, CNET, Gizmodo, Times of India, Yahoo, Noticias Villaguay, El Digital, TrendinTech, Mirage News, Earth.com, Evrim Ağacı, Anadolu Agency, Heise, Business Today, The Morning News, Dev Hardware, The Coast Guard

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Fona herzogae was a small, dog-sized herbivorous dinosaur that lived around 99 million years ago in a warm, humid, and muddy floodplain ecosystem with rivers, an inland ocean, and active volcanoes in present-day Utah.

The fossil evidence suggests that Fona herzogae spent at least part of its time in underground burrows.

Fona's fossils are often found complete and well-preserved, indicating it likely lived in burrows before death, where its skeletons were protected, contributing to its higher prevalence in the area.

Researchers have found tunnels and chambers of its close relative, Oryctodromeus, supporting the idea of burrowing behavior.

Fona herzogae had a simple body plan, likely covered in a downy coat of colorful feathers, and was an ancestor of Thescelosaurus, offering insight into life during the mid-Cretaceous.

The genus name "Fona" pays tribute to an indigenous myth from the island of Guam, while the species name "herzogae" honors Lisa Herzog, the paleontology operations manager at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences possesses the genuine skeleton of Fona herzogae, a 3D-printed model of its skull, and a scientific illustration depicting its appearance, but no exhibition project for the fossil has been announced yet.

Sources: noticiasvillaguay, biobiochile, algeriemondeinfos, elvocero, nacion, poderygloria, notimerica, sci.news, phys.org, nationaltribune, headtopics.

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Egyptian scientists say the fossil of a four-legged prehistoric whale, unearthed over a decade ago in the country's Western Desert, is that of a previously unknown species. The creature, an ancestor of the modern-day whale, is believed to have lived 43 million years ago.

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The prehistoric whale, known as semi-aquatic because it lived both on land and sea, sported features of an accomplished hunter, the team's leading paleontologist, Hesham Sallam, told The Associated Press – features that make it stand out among other whale fossils.

The fossil was first found by a team of Egyptian environmentalists in 2008 in an area that was covered by seas in prehistoric times, but researchers only published their findings confirming a new species last month.

Sallam said that his team did not start examining the fossil until 2017 because he wanted to assemble the best and the most talented Egyptian paleontologists for the study.

"This is the first time in the history of Egyptian vertebrate paleontology to have an Egyptian team leading a documentation of a new genus and species of four-legged whale," said Sallam.

The fossil sheds light on the evolution of whales from herbivore land mammals into carnivorous species that today live exclusively in water. The transition took place over roughly 10 million years, according to an article published on the discovery in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Egypt's Western Desert region is already known for the so-called Whale Valley, or Wadi Al-Hitan, a tourist attraction and the country's only natural World Heritage site that contains fossil remains of another type of prehistoric whales.

The newly discovered creature belongs to the family of Protecetids, extinct semi-aquatic whales that lived from 59 to 34 million years ago, Sallam said. It would have walked on land but also hunted in the water.

"This is yet another new species of early whales from the time when they retained four functional limbs," said Jonathan Geisler, an expert on the evolutionary history of mammals with New York Institute of Technology.

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He said that the location of the discovery in Egypt is also a clue as to when and how they spread around the globe. Geisler was not involved in the find.

The oldest fossil whales are about 50 million years old and are believed to have originated in modern-day Pakistan and India. However, scientists have not been able to reach a conclusive answer as to when whales moved out of their point of origin to all the world's oceans.

"This new species by itself cannot answer that question, but when viewed in the context of other fossil discoveries, suggests that this dispersal occurred 43 million years ago," said Geisler, adding the new find could possibly serve as a link between Indo-Pakistan and North American regions.

The fossil whale has been named Phiomicetus Anubis, after the god of death in ancient Egypt.

"We chose the name Anubis because it had a strong and deadly bite," said Sallam, professor of paleontology at Mansoura University in Egypt. "It could kill any creature it crossed paths with."

The new species stands out for its elongated skull and snout that suggest it was an efficient carnivore capable of grasping and chewing its prey, he said. It was about three meters (nine feet long) and weighed around 600 kilograms, according to researchers. It is also believed to have had sharp hearing and sense of smell.

The discovery followed a four-year collaboration between Egyptian paleontologists and US-based scientists, Sallam added.

His team has previously made headlines worldwide with their 2018 discovery of Mansourasaurus, a new species of long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Nile Delta province of Mansoura.

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