Dinosaur Footprints: Why It's Dangerous To Use Them For Size

So, why is it dangerous to use dinosaur footprints to estimate the overall size of the animal? Well, there's a number of reasons.

The most obvious reasons are because the tracks could be distorted or caved in. However, there's another, simple but unheard of, reason. The dinosaur may have simply had big feet. Sounds strange I know. But this has happened before. Allow me to explain...

Lark Quarry in Australia has one of the best dinosaur trackways anywhere in the world. It shows a stampede took place alongside a lake and it was caused by a predator. That predator left it's tracks behind, but no skeleton. Based on the size of the prints, scientists estimated the predator was about 8 ft tall at the hip. There was little, if any, evidence of a predator that big in Australia. Then, scientists made a breakthrough discovery. They found a skeleton belonging to a new theropod. They named it, Australovenator. Right of the bat, they thought this was the predator. However, Australovenator only had a hip height of 5 ft. 3 ft short. But scientists still felt it was Australovenator. So, they made a model of it's leg and foot and brought it back to the trackway. The foot and footprint was a perfect match. Australovenator was the predator, it just had big feet.

This situation was discussed in the documentary Dino Stampede...

So, while dinosaur footprints are great and useful for a number of things, they can be dangerous when it comes to estimating the size of the track-maker. Australovenator is a good example of that.