Ancient South Americans were apparently inspired by fossilized dinosaur tracks in what is now eastern Brazil, where they cut figures into the rock, imprinted tens of millions of years earlier by the movements of giants.
The dinosaur tracks belong to theropods, sauropods, and iguanodontians, and are spread across three rock outcroppings in the Brazilian state of Paraíba. The petroglyphs on the site consist primarily of circular patterns, but several look very much like the tridactyl dinosaur tracks also present on the site. The team’s research cataloguing the petroglyphs and associated trackways was published in Scientific Reports.