THE 4,300 dinosaur footprints discovered in Zhangjiakou, North China’s Hebei Province, in 2020 have been proved to be from four different dinosaur genera, according to recent survey results disclosed by the Department of Natural Resources of Hebei.

“The footprints not only reflect dinosaurs’ living habits, but also explain the relationship between dinosaurs and their living environment at the time,” said Xing Lida, a dinosaur expert from China University of Geosciences.

Li Jianjun, a researcher from the Beijing Museum of Natural History, said: “Dinosaur bones become fossils after their death, while dinosaur footprints are left from when they were alive, which provide wonderful insights into how they lived. They can provide a lot of information about their behavior, as well as information on paleogeography and paleoenvironment.”

The site in Zhangjiakou has surpassed the record set at a site in Sichuan Province that has over 900 dinosaur footprints. The site has been covered up for protection after experts carried out 3D imaging and cast molds of the footprints, according to Hebei’s natural resources department.

“It can be inferred that the footprints belong to an era around the Jurassic and the Cretaceous, when there were large forests and water sources here,” said Sun Xiao, a chief engineer at the Regional Geological Survey Institute affiliated with Hebei Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Exploration. A large number of herbivorous sauropods and carnivorous theropods could have coexisted at the time.

Pointing at a tridactyl footprint at the site that looks like a bird claw, Li said the sharp-looking footprints are mostly left by carnivorous dinosaurs. Their footprints are about 10 centimeters long. Among them, the largest is 37.5 centimeters in length.

“Based on this, we can infer that the dinosaur’s body length was four to five meters, being at the top of the food chain at that time,” Li said.

According to Sun, they have discovered dinosaur footprints of four different genera along more than 70 tracks at the site. The footprints are located on fine, pebbly sandstone that dates back 150 million years and was covered by thick volcanic ash, providing good conditions for the preservation of the footprints.

A great number of dinosaur fossils and footprints have been found in Hebei in recent years.(China Daily)