Researchers in Brazil have made a stunning discovery that spans millennia: dinosaur footprints along with rock paintings more than 9,000 years old. The collection was discovered at Serrote do Letreiro in the state’s Sousa basin, and the corresponding study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The study suggests that prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Brazil produced numerous enigmatic petroglyphs, or petroglyphs, next to dinosaur footprints. These finds offer fascinating insights into the blend of paleontology and archaeology, as revealed by this impressive collection of Serote’s discoveries.
The paper notes that while researchers first identified the petroglyphs in 1975, they only recently found these carvings in close proximity to massive dinosaur footprints. This discovery was facilitated by the innovative use of drones. They said the tracks belonged to dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period, which ended about 66 million years ago.
The researchers believe that ancient humans intentionally placed these carvings next to the dinosaur footprints, noting that some petroglyphs are only 2 to 4 inches across and may depict the footprints themselves.
This suggests that people of that era were not only aware of dinosaurs, but also deeply curious about them. “The people who made the petroglyphs were very aware of the prints and probably chose the location precisely because of them,” Leonardo Troiano, lead author of the study and an archaeologist at Brazil’s National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage, told Live Science. it was impossible to ignore their presence.”
Troiano said that these ancient people were very interested in the footprints and considered them to be significant in some way. This also runs parallel to Serrote’s location. Serrote do Letreiro, which translates to “Pointer Hill” in Portuguese, is close to the Valley of the Dinosaurs, a protected area known for its hundreds of fossilized dinosaur footprints.
Troiano and his fellow researchers conducted the study with a group of middle school students who explored the site in 2023. In addition to learning about the convergence of paleontology and archaeology, the students helped photograph the specimens. The team notes that the tracks belong to different types of dinosaurs, such as carnivorous theropods, long-necked sauropods and bipedal ornithopods, including iguanodont dinosaurs.
The petroglyphs discovered were mainly circle carvings filled with lines and other geometric touches. These artworks are attributed to people who lived in the region between 9,400 and 2,620 years ago. “They were small semi-nomadic groups of hunters and gatherers who lived in society and used objects made of stone,” Troiano said. These ancient people made these rock carvings using two techniques; perforation and scraping, the team said.
“Perforation involves using a type of stone hammer to create indentations on the surface that resemble points, while scraping involves rubbing a stone against the surface until it forms the desired engraving,” Troiano explained.
The petroglyphs offer exceptional evidence of the historical population and shed light on the rituals and practices of the time. “I think the creation of rock art is embedded in some kind of ritual context: people getting together and creating something, maybe using some psychotropic substances,” Troiano said, adding that these people are interested in “what the prints represent.”
Confirming Troiano’s hypothesis, Jan Simek, distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, told CNN: “The paper provides an interesting new example of how ancient people observed and incorporated fossils on the landscape into their religious experiences and interpretations.”
He said the case was another archaeological example of “the human tendency to associate the spiritual world created in the imagination with inexplicable things in the world around us.”
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on May 4, 2024. It has since been updated.
