A dinosaur track discovered along Brushy Creek in Hutto near Austin is offering a glimpse into Texas’ prehistoric past.
For Gio Bernabe, walking along Brushy Creek is a chance to explore, fish, and look for anything interesting.
But during a recent Saturday afternoon walk, she came across something she never expected to find.
“And then I saw there was like this huge imprint of kind of like a foot, like a three-toed foot,” Bernabe said. “So I looked at it and I kind of cleaned it up and it looked like a dinosaur foot.”
Bernabe posted a photo of the print on social media, where it quickly attracted attention from the community.
“I was so excited because this is honestly one of my biggest dreams,” Bernabe said. “I've always wanted to find something like, really cool like this, like fossil-related, and I found it in Hutto, Texas.”
Chris Sagebiel with the Jackson School of Geosciences’ Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections examined the tracks and confirmed they belonged to a dinosaur. He said the tracks are particularly well preserved.
“I can only think of a couple of places where, in this area, where we have tracks that are that age, that are that well preserved,” Sagebiel said. “We get a lot of really faint tracks or partial tracks, but a beautiful one like that is a very nice find.”
Dinosaur tracks are relatively common around Austin, according to Sagebiel. However, they are more often found west of Interstate 35, where older rock formations are exposed.
The size and spacing of the tracks can help researchers identify the type of dinosaur that made them.
Sagebiel said the tracks likely came from a large, plant-eating, two-legged dinosaur — possibly a Hadrosaur, also known as a duck-billed dinosaur.
This distinctive dino from North America is a member of the family hadrosauridae.Getty Images
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