First Confirmed Tyrannosaurus rex Trackway Discovered in North Dakota

A high-school science teacher from Colorado, working as a volunteer research associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, uncovered two large three-toed footprints in the Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota in July 2025. The prints, each about three feet long, matched the size and toe arrangement expected of Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest carnivore known from the Late Cretaceous.

Further excavation, led by senior curator Tyler Lyson, revealed three additional prints, forming a four-foot trackway that researchers later extended with a fifth impression. The sequence, described in a September 8 study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, represents the first definitive T. rex trackway and offers a rare glimpse of the animal’s locomotion 66.5 million years ago.

"Rocks can weather into all different shapes and sizes, you know, some that look like Florida, some that look like Texas, some that look like T. rex footprints," Lyson said.

"I hope that more people go out and look a little bit harder at those strange looking rocks and this leads to a better, more detailed understanding of what life looked like in the past," Hups said.

Analysis of the footprints indicates a stride length of roughly 13 feet, suggesting the dinosaur was walking at an estimated 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour. Experts note that the speed is lower than the animal’s maximum capability, as the tracks were made in soft, wet soil.

"The most important aspect is that this is perhaps the first definitive Tyrannosaurus rex trackway sequence," said vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr.

The discovery adds to the limited record of North American dinosaur trackways from the end of the Cretaceous and will allow further study of possible skin or tissue impressions as the museum plans to collect three of the prints for detailed analysis.