High in the central highlands of Bolivia, a dry plateau has turned out to be one of the busiest crossroads in dinosaur history. More than 16,000 fossilized footprints, pressed into what was once a muddy lakeshore, capture animals walking, running, swimming and even dragging their tails, preserving a behavioral record that bones alone could never show. The site reads like a traffic report from the Cretaceous, revealing how different species shared space, moved in groups and returned again and again along the same ancient route.
What emerges from this “dinosaur highway” is not just a tally of tracks, but a layered story about ecology, climate and survival at the end of the dinosaur era. By tracing the paths of predators, plant‑eaters and small birdlike foragers across the same slabs of rock, researchers can reconstruct how these animals used the landscape and how their world changed over time. The footprints turn a once‑mythic landscape into one of the most detailed windows onto dinosaur behavior anywhere in South America.
The Bolivian plateau that turned into a dinosaur highway
The tracksite sits in the arid Carreras Pampa of central Bolivia, a broad, wind‑scraped basin that today feels far removed from the lush dinosaur scenes of popular imagination. Yet in the late Cretaceous, this same ground was a low‑lying lakeshore where mud flats, shallow water and soft sand created perfect conditions for preserving footprints. As dinosaurs trudged along the margins of this lake, their weight pressed deep impressions into the substrate, which later hardened and were buried, only to be exposed again as erosion stripped away younger layers of rock. That long geological cycle is what now allows researchers to walk across slabs that still bear the three‑toed marks of large theropods and the rounder prints of hefty plant‑eaters.
Scientists working in Carreras Pampa describe the site as the most extensive dinosaur tracksite ever discovered in South America, with a dense concentration of overlapping trails that has no precedent in the region. The surrounding landscape, now a patchwork of scrub and rock, frames a fossil surface that stretches across multiple terraces and ridges, each one preserving a slightly different moment in time. The scale of the discovery, which includes thousands of individual impressions and long, continuous trackways, has turned this once‑remote plateau into a focal point for paleontological fieldwork and a new stop on Bolivia’s growing map of dinosaur tourism, alongside better known sites such as Cal Orck’o near Sucre.
A record‑breaking concentration of tracks
At the heart of the excitement is the sheer volume of evidence underfoot. Researchers have documented more than 16,000 individual dinosaur footprints at Carreras Pampa, a figure that keeps climbing as new surfaces are mapped and cleaned. Many of these prints link into long trackways that cross the rock for tens of meters, preserving not just isolated steps but entire journeys. The density is so high that in some areas, tracks overlap like the scuffs on a well‑used sidewalk, suggesting repeated use of the same corridors by different animals over time.
Other surveys of the broader site have tallied nearly 18,000 dinosaur footprints and swim tracks when additional layers and adjacent exposures are included, underscoring how extensive the preserved surface really is. That combination of raw numbers and long, continuous trails is what allows paleontologists to treat the site as a behavioral dataset rather than a collection of curiosities. Instead of guessing how a species might have moved from a skeleton, they can measure stride length, pace and direction directly from the rock, comparing hundreds of examples to tease out patterns in speed, gait and group size.
From local Legend to scientific landmark
Long before paleontologists arrived with measuring tapes and drones, people living in the central highlands of Bolivia had their own explanations for the giant three‑toed marks scattered across the hills. According to local stories, the impressions belonged to supernatural beings or enormous birds, and the strange shapes were woven into regional folklore as a kind of living Legend. In places like TORO TORO and other nearby communities, the tracks were landmarks and curiosities, but not yet recognized as a continuous record of ancient life. That changed as geologists and visiting researchers began to map the surfaces systematically, realizing that the scattered prints were part of a much larger, connected story.
Once the scientific significance became clear, the region shifted from mythic landscape to research hotspot. Detailed fieldwork in TORO and the surrounding highlands documented how the footprints were laid down in successive layers of lakebed sediment, each one capturing a slightly different configuration of animals. In public communication, scientists have emphasized that the tracks are not random, but instead record dinosaur behavior in motion, from solitary hunters to herds and mixed groups. That narrative has helped local residents see the prints not just as curiosities, but as a resource that can support guided tours, educational programs and conservation efforts that keep the fragile surfaces intact.
Who walked here: predators, plant‑eaters and tiny foragers
One of the most striking aspects of the Carreras Pampa site is the diversity of animals represented on the same slabs of rock. Large, three‑toed impressions with sharp claw marks point to big theropod dinosaurs, the two‑legged predators that dominated many Cretaceous ecosystems. Their tracks often run in relatively straight lines, with long strides that suggest purposeful movement across the lakeshore. Interspersed with these are broader, rounder prints that likely belong to heavy plant‑eaters, possibly sauropods or ornithopods, whose weight pressed deeper basins into the mud. The coexistence of these track types on the same surfaces hints at a shared habitat where hunters and herbivores used the same corridors, perhaps at different times of day or seasons.
Mixed among the dinosaur traffic are smaller, thin‑toed impressions that look more delicate, with narrow digits and shallower depth. These prints have been interpreted as the marks of shorebird‑like foragers, animals that may have darted along the water’s edge in search of invertebrates or small fish. Their presence, Mixed in among the larger dinosaur tracks, adds another layer of ecological detail, showing that the lakeshore supported a web of life that included not just giants but also nimble, bird‑sized creatures. For paleontologists, that combination of large and small footprints on the same surfaces is a rare opportunity to reconstruct how different body sizes and feeding strategies overlapped in a single place.
Reading behavior from stone: gaits, speeds and group movement
Footprints are more than static impressions; arranged in sequence, they become a film strip of motion. At Carreras Pampa, long trackways allow researchers to calculate how fast dinosaurs were moving, whether they were accelerating or slowing down, and how they adjusted their gait on different parts of the lakeshore. By measuring the distance between successive prints and the width of each step, scientists can estimate walking and running speeds, then compare those values across multiple individuals. Some trackways show steady, evenly spaced steps that match a relaxed walk, while others tighten into shorter, more frequent prints that suggest a quickened pace, perhaps as animals navigated slippery mud or moved away from deeper water.
Equally revealing are the patterns of parallel tracks that hint at group behavior. In several areas, multiple theropod trackways run side by side, maintaining similar directions and spacing over long distances. These alignments support the idea that some predators may have moved together, at least temporarily, rather than always hunting alone. Thousands of footprints at the site provide clues about such group movement, as well as changes in direction that might reflect animals skirting obstacles or responding to shifting water levels. For me, the power of this evidence lies in its immediacy: instead of inferring social behavior from bone beds, we can see it traced out step by step.
Tail drags, swim strokes and the water’s edge
Not all the marks at Carreras Pampa are footprints. In some trackways, shallow grooves run between or alongside the prints, recording where a dinosaur’s tail brushed the ground as it walked. These tail traces are especially intriguing because they challenge the common image of dinosaurs always holding their tails high for balance. In certain instances, the grooves suggest that animals let their tails sag when moving slowly or when the substrate was soft enough to support the extra drag. Researchers studying the site have highlighted how these tail traces add nuance to reconstructions of posture and locomotion, showing that behavior could vary with context rather than following a single rigid pattern.
Other parts of the site preserve what look like swim tracks, where only the tips of toes or claws scratched the sediment as animals paddled through deeper water. These elongated, intermittent marks indicate that some dinosaurs were buoyant enough to move with partial support from the lake, using their limbs more like oars than legs. Combined with the shoreline footprints, the swim traces map out a gradient from dry land to open water, revealing how dinosaurs exploited the full range of habitats around the lake. For paleontologists, this mix of walking, wading and swimming evidence turns the site into a three‑dimensional behavioral record, capturing how animals navigated a dynamic environment rather than a static, flat plain.
Why tracks matter more than bones for behavior
Compared with skeletons, which often represent animals that died in unusual circumstances, footprints capture ordinary moments in the lives of dinosaurs. A single trackway can show how a healthy individual moved across its habitat, free from the distortions that come with decay and burial. At Carreras Pampa, the thousands of preserved steps provide researchers with a statistical sample of everyday behavior, from preferred walking speeds to how often animals changed direction. Scientists studying the site have emphasized that this abundance of tracks offers clues that fossil skeletons cannot, because trackways record real‑time decisions about where to go and how fast to move.
That behavioral richness is what makes the Bolivian “dinosaur freeway” such a valuable counterpart to bone‑bearing sites elsewhere in the world. Analyses of the Carreras Pampa surfaces show how different species shared space, how often they returned to the same routes and how environmental conditions shaped their movements. As one team of Scientists has noted, the site provides researchers with a record of repeated traffic along a well‑trodden beach, something that is almost impossible to infer from scattered bones alone. For me, that contrast underscores why tracksites like this are not just supplements to skeletal fossils, but essential archives in their own right.
Piecing together a Forgotten Dinosaur Highway
When I look at the Carreras Pampa discovery in context, it feels like the restoration of a missing chapter in South America’s deep past. Reports on the site describe how Fossilized Footprints Reveal South America as home to a vast network of dinosaur routes, a Forgotten Dinosaur Highway that once linked lakes, floodplains and forests across what is now Bolivia. The arid plateau that preserves these tracks today would have been part of a broader corridor where animals migrated, foraged and interacted over generations. By mapping the directions and densities of trackways, researchers can start to infer which routes were main thoroughfares and which were side paths, much like traffic engineers reconstructing ancient roads from wheel ruts.
That perspective also reframes how we think about dinosaur extinction in this part of the world. The Carreras Pampa tracks capture a thriving ecosystem in the late Cretaceous, with predators, herbivores and small foragers all using the same lakeshore. Yet within a geologically short time, that entire community vanished. For me, the poignancy of the site lies in that contrast between bustling activity and eventual silence. The footprints show that, right up until the end, dinosaurs in this region were not fading relics but active participants in a complex landscape. The highway they carved into the mud is a reminder that extinction can erase even the busiest worlds, leaving only traces for us to read millions of years later.
From scientific trove to national asset
The scale and significance of the Carreras Pampa discovery have quickly elevated it from a local curiosity to a national scientific asset. Reports describe how Dinosaur Tracks Unearthed in this part of Bolivia represent the single largest dinosaur track site in the Southern Hemisphere, with over 16,600 footprints and swim traces recorded so far. That concentration has drawn teams of Scientists who are working not only to document the tracks but also to stabilize and protect the exposed surfaces from weathering. Their efforts include detailed 3D scanning, which preserves digital models of the prints even as natural erosion continues to reshape the landscape.
At the same time, the site’s visibility has sparked conversations about how to balance research access, tourism and local stewardship. In TORO TORO and other nearby communities, guides now lead visitors across designated paths, explaining how the tracks formed and what they reveal about dinosaur life. National authorities have begun to frame the Carreras Pampa discovery as part of a broader strategy to promote geotourism, linking it with other fossil sites and natural attractions. For me, the most encouraging sign is that the same footprints that once fed regional Legend are now helping to support education and livelihoods, turning a window into deep time into a resource for people living on that ancient highway’s surface today.
How the Bolivian tracks reshape dinosaur science
As researchers continue to analyze the Carreras Pampa data, the site is already reshaping several debates in dinosaur science. Detailed measurements of the theropod trackways, for example, are informing models of how large predators balanced speed and stability on soft ground, complementing biomechanical studies based on limb bones. The presence of parallel trackways and mixed‑species surfaces is feeding into discussions about social behavior, territoriality and niche partitioning, offering concrete examples from a single, well‑documented location. For scientists who have long relied on scattered, isolated prints, the ability to compare thousands of steps from the same environment is a major advance.
The discovery is also prompting a reevaluation of South America’s role in global dinosaur research. While famous skeletons from Patagonia and Brazil have dominated headlines, the Bolivian “dinosaur freeway” shows that tracksites can be just as transformative. Reports on the find highlight how Prints record dinosaur behavior in ways that bones cannot, capturing interactions with the environment and with other animals. For me, that shift underscores a broader lesson: to understand ancient life fully, we need to read not just the skeletons, but also the paths those animals left behind, whether in Bolivia’s highlands or on other forgotten highways still waiting to be uncovered.
A new chapter for Bolivia’s deep‑time story
Bolivia has long been known among specialists for its fossil riches, but the Carreras Pampa tracksite gives the country a new kind of scientific calling card. The combination of high‑altitude scenery, dense trackways and vivid behavioral clues makes the site uniquely compelling, both for researchers and for the public. As more surfaces are mapped and more trackways are analyzed, the “dinosaur highway” is likely to yield further surprises, from subtle variations in gait to new evidence of how climate and water levels shaped dinosaur movements. Each additional footprint adds another data point to a growing picture of life at the end of the Cretaceous in this part of the world.
For me, the enduring power of the site lies in its ability to collapse time. Standing on the same rock where a theropod once planted its foot, or tracing the faint groove of a tail drag, it becomes easier to imagine these animals not as distant monsters but as real creatures negotiating mud, water and each other. The over 16,000 dinosaur tracks preserved here are more than a record; they are a narrative of movement, choice and coexistence, written in stone across a Bolivian plateau that is only now revealing how busy it once was.
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