‘Remarkable’ Rock Art and Dinosaur Footprint Site ‘Like No Other’

Research has revealed a “remarkable” site featuring mysterious prehistoric rock art and dinosaur footprints that is “like no other” in the world.

The Serrote do Letreiro Site, described in a study published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, is on a rural property in the Sousa municipality of Paraíba state, northeastern Brazil.

The site, which comprises three large rock outcrops totaling more than 160,000 square feet, is characterized by an “outstanding juxtaposition” of paleontological and archaeological elements, according to the study.

These elements include the footprints of various dinosaurs, dating back about 140 million years to the Lower Cretaceous period, along with several petroglyphs—a type of rock carving created by removing parts of the surface using tools like chisels.

“The main discovery [of the study] is that the site brings together petroglyphs [rock art] and dinosaur fossils like no other archaeological or paleontological site in the world,” Leonardo Troiano, an archaeologist with Brazil’s National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) and lead author of the study, told Newsweek.

“Although there are occurrences of fossils and rock art nearby, a site where they are literally side by side has never been described.”

The first mentions of dinosaur footprints from the Sousa region date to the early 20th century. But the paleontological remains only became subject to scientific investigation when Italian priest and researcher Giuseppe Leonardi began investigations in the area in the 1970s.

Leonardi is credited with the formal discovery of several paleontological sites, including Serrote do Letreiro, during that decade. His research, however, focused on the paleontological aspects of the site, and overlooked the petroglyphs that dot the area.

“He never paid much attention to the petroglyphs and only mentioned them as ‘engravings left by Kariri Indians’, continuing to focus on the footprints in the Sousa region,” Troiano said.

Since then, the rock art at the site has only briefly been mentioned in scientific literature. And prior to the latest study, no comprehensive analysis of the petroglyphs had been carried out, nor had researchers taken into account the relationship between the dinosaur footprints and the rock art.

In an attempt to learn more about the site and address these issues, Troiano and colleagues conducted a survey of the Serrote do Letreiro site, as well as capturing aerial images with drones.

The investigations resulted in the identification of “many” petroglyphs and additional dinosaur footprints, as well as revealing a close relationship between the two.

“We were the first to pay attention to the intimate relationship between [the petroglyphs] and the footprints,” Troiano said. “We continued our exploration and discovered, in addition to the outcrop that Leonardi had studied, many other dinosaur footprints and almost a hundred petroglyphs in the other two outcrops. We decided that publishing the site was imperative, as it’s vulnerable, in an area with a lot of mining activity and could be destroyed.”

The Sousa region has ideal conditions for preserving footprints, but not bones. As a result, relatively few fossilized dinosaur bones have been found in the region, in contrast to numerous fossilized footprints.

As a result, it is difficult to determine the exact species of dinosaurs that made the footprints. But the researchers said they represent ornithopod, theropod and sauropod dinosaurs.

Ornithopods were a group of herbivorous animals that were one of the most successful and enduring dinosaur lineages. They originally started out as small, bipedal grazers, growing in size and number over time.

[16:18] Ian Randall

Theropods, meanwhile, were carnivorous dinosaurs that ranged in size from the 2-foot-long Microraptor to the 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex.

The sauropod group of dinosaurs includes the largest land-dwelling animals ever to walk the Earth, such as the titanosaurs. These dinosaurs tended to have very long necks, long tails, small heads and four thick legs. Among the newly identified footprints in the latest study were the tracks of a titanosaur herd.

The petroglyphs at the site tend to feature geometric shapes, although it is not clear what the symbols mean.

“We will probably never know,” Troiano said. “Since the culture that produced them is very ancient, the secrets of the visual code they used has been lost. However, we know that based on dating from sites in the region, the petroglyphs must have been made between 3,000 and 9,000 years ago.”

Intriguingly, the authors of the study propose that there is a link between the footprints and petroglyphs.

“They look very much like the initial visions generated by the brain when humans ingest hallucinogens,” Troiano said. “This and other factors lead me to believe that their creation was embedded in a ritualistic context, probably some kind of consumption ceremony, and the site was selected due to the presence of footprints, and therefore considered important to them.

“Traditionally, science has ignored and belittled Native American history, and denied that natives and indigenous peoples could make significant contributions because ‘their simple or primitive minds’—according to scholars in the past—would not be capable of admiring or having scientific curiosity about fossils.”

As for the practical implications, the study demonstrates that Native Americans did find fossils and that they had their own way of interpreting this natural phenomenon—and that these fossils were important to them. This is evidenced by the fact that they seemingly dedicated significant amounts of effort to creating numerous petroglyphs around the footprints, according to Troiano.

The results of the study indicate that fossils have a greater cultural relevance than commonly imagined, the researcher said.

“One practical consequence of this is that these fossils can now be recognized as Brazilian cultural heritage, not just objects of scientific interest,” Troiano said.

“It’s simply amazing to find such ancient rock art alongside beautifully preserved dinosaur footprints, which are even more unfathomably ancient! Now, we plan to return and excavate the site and surroundings as soon as possible, and perhaps we will be able to gather more information about the ancient human group responsible for the petroglyphs.”