Southern Africa is famous for its rich record of prehistoric life, including dinosaurs. But around 182 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions spread lava across much of the inland Karoo Basin, where many dinosaurs once lived. After this event, the fossil record in the region becomes surprisingly quiet during the Jurassic Period (which lasted from 201 million to 145 million years ago).
Recent discoveries are beginning to change that picture. They show that dinosaurs continued to live in southern Africa long after those dramatic lava flows.
New Dinosaur Tracks on South Africa's Coast
In 2025, scientists reported dinosaur tracks about 140 million years old on a remote stretch of coastline in South Africa's Western Cape. These were the first tracks from that time period in the region (the Cretaceous, 145 million to 66 million years ago).
As ichnologists (studying fossil tracks and traces), the team regularly works along the Western Cape coast near Knysna. Most of their research focuses on tracks preserved in coastal aeolianites (cemented sand dunes) that are between 50,000 and 400,000 years old.
During a visit in early 2025, they explored a small outcrop of rock formed in the early Cretaceous Period. It is the only nearby exposure of rock from that time, and much of it is submerged at high tide. The team hoped they might find a theropod (dinosaur) tooth like one discovered there by a 13-year-old boy in 2017.
Instead, they found something far more exciting. Linda Helm, a member of the group, spotted dinosaur tracks. A closer look revealed more than two dozen possible footprints.
The Brenton Formation exposure is very small, measuring no more than 40 meters long and five meters wide, with cliffs rising up to five meters above the shore. Finding dozens of tracks in such a limited area suggests that dinosaurs were fairly common in this region during the Cretaceous.
The researchers estimate the tracks are about 132 million years old. That makes them the youngest known dinosaur tracks in southern Africa (50 million years younger than the youngest tracks reported from the Karoo Basin). They also represent only the second known set of Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in South Africa, and the second from the Western Cape. Some tracks are preserved on flat rock surfaces, while others appear in cross section within the cliffs.
Southern Africa's Dinosaur Fossil Record
Southern Africa holds an extensive record of vertebrate tracks and traces from the Mesozoic Era (the "Age of Dinosaurs," from 252 million to 66 million years ago, a time span that includes the Jurassic), especially in the Karoo Basin, which is filled with thick layers of sedimentary rock.
Tracks from the Triassic and Jurassic periods are common in Lesotho and nearby regions of South Africa, including the Free State and Eastern Cape.
However, later volcanic activity created the Drakensberg Group, covering many of these fossil-bearing layers with lava. Some dinosaurs may have briefly survived the initial eruptions, but they were likely among the last animals to live in the Karoo Basin at that time.
As the supercontinent Gondwana began to break apart near the end of the Jurassic Period and into the early Cretaceous Period, smaller basins formed in what are now the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. These areas contain limited deposits from the Cretaceous.
Body fossils from these deposits, mainly in the Eastern Cape, include a range of dinosaurs. Among them are the first dinosaur identified in the southern hemisphere, now known to be a stegosaur, along with sauropods, a coelurosaurian, and young iguanodontids.
In contrast, fossil remains from the Western Cape are rare. They include a few isolated sauropod teeth, scattered bones likely from a sauropod, and two finds near Knysna: the theropod tooth discovered earlier and part of a tibia.
Now, attention is turning to footprints instead of bones.
The newly discovered tracks lie in the modern intertidal zone, where they are covered by seawater at high tide twice a day.
The environment 132 million years ago would have looked very different from today's coastline, estuary, and developed landscape. At that time, dinosaurs likely moved through tidal channels or along point bars (river beaches), surrounded by vegetation unlike anything in the area now.
The tracks appear to have been made by a mix of dinosaurs. These include theropods and possibly ornithopods (both these kinds of dinosaur were bipedal, walking on two legs), as well as possible sauropods (huge dinosaurs with very long necks and very long tails that were quadrupedal, walking on four legs). Theropods were meat eaters, while ornithopods and sauropods were plant eaters.
Identifying the exact type of dinosaur from footprints alone can be difficult. Theropod and ornithopod tracks can look similar, and sauropod tracks, although larger, do not always show clear toe impressions.
Because of these challenges, the researchers chose not to "over-interpret" the trackmakers. Their study focuses on documenting the presence and abundance of dinosaur tracks from this time period in the Brenton Formation.
The presence of early Cretaceous dinosaur tracks in both the Robberg Formation and the Brenton Formation suggests that more sites may still be waiting to be found. Other non-marine Cretaceous rock exposures exist in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape.
Future systematic searches of these areas could reveal additional dinosaur bones, more tracks, and possibly traces of other ancient animals.
Mark G. Dixon and Fred van Berkel of the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, contributed to this research.
