The investigation has revealed a “remarkable” place with mysterious prehistoric rock art and dinosaur footprints unlike any other in the world.
The Serrote do Letreiro site, described in a study published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, is located in a rural area of the municipality of Sousa, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Paraíba.
The site, which includes three giant rock outcrops totaling more than 160,000 feet, is characterized by an “exceptional juxtaposition” of paleontological and archaeological elements, according to the study.
These items come with dinosaur footprints, dating back about 140 million years, to the Early Cretaceous, as well as several petroglyphs, a type of rock engraving created by cutting off portions of the surface using equipment such as chisels.
“The main location [of the study] is that the site brings together a combination of petroglyphs [rock art] and dinosaur fossils like no other archaeological or paleontological site in the world,” said Leonardo Troiano, an archaeologist at Brazil’s National Institute of Historical and Artistic History. Heritage. IPHAN) and leader of the study, told Newsweek.
“Although there are fossil finds and rock art nearby, a place where they are literally back and forth has never been described. “
The first records of dinosaur footprints in the Sousa region date back to the early 20th century. But the paleontological remains were not the subject of clinical research until Italian priest and scholar Giuseppe Leonardi began his studies in the domain in the 1970s.
Leonardi is credited with the formal discovery of several paleontological sites, including Serrote do Letreiro, in this decade. However, his research focused on the paleontological facets of the site and overlooked the petroglyphs that dot the area.
“He never paid much attention to the petroglyphs and only described them as ‘carvings left by the Kariri Indians,’ proceeding to footprints in the Sousa area,” Troiano said.
Since then, the rock art of the petroglyphs has only been briefly discussed in the clinical literature. And prior to the most recent study, no thorough investigation of the petroglyphs had been conducted, nor had researchers taken into account the dating between dinosaur footprints and rock art. .
In an attempt to become more informed about these issues and address them, Troiano and his colleagues conducted research in Serrote do Letreiro and captured aerial images with drones.
The investigations resulted in the identity of “numerous” petroglyphs and other dinosaur footprints, as well as revealing a close dating between the two.
“We were the first to pay attention to the intimate dating between [the petroglyphs] and the footprints,” Troiano said. “We continued our exploration and discovered, in addition to the outcrop studied through Leonardi, many other dinosaur footprints and almost a hundred petroglyphs in the other two outcrops. We felt it was imperative to publish the site, as it is vulnerable, on a domain with a lot of mining activity and could be destroyed. “
The Sousa region presents ideal situations for the preservation of footprints, but not of bones. As a result, few fossilized dinosaur bones have been found in the area, in contrast to the numerous fossilized footprints.
As a result, it’s tricky to determine the precise species of dinosaurs that left those footprints, but the researchers said they represented ornithopod, theropod and sauropod dinosaurs.
Ornithopods were a group of herbivorous animals that constituted one of the most successful and enduring dinosaur lineages. Originally, they were small, bipedal shepherds, which increased in length and number over time.
Theropods, on the other hand, were carnivorous dinosaurs that ranged in length from the 2-foot-long Microraptor to the 40-foot-long Tyrannosaurus rex.
The sauropod dinosaur organization includes the largest land animals to ever walk the Earth, such as titanosaurs. These dinosaurs tended to have very long necks, long tails, small heads, and 4 thick legs. Among the newly known footprints in recent times were the Footprints of a herd of titanosaurs.
Petroglyphs at the site tend to feature geometric shapes, the meaning of those symbols is unclear.
“We’ll probably never know,” Troiano said. Because the culture that produced them is so ancient, the secrets of the visual code they used have been lost. However, we do know, based on the dating of sites in the area, the petroglyphs must have been made between 3,000 and 9,000 years ago. “
Interestingly, the study’s authors propose that there is a link between the footprints and the petroglyphs.
“They are very similar to the initial visions generated through the brain when humans ingest hallucinogens,” Troiano said. “This and other points lead me to the conclusion that their creation was part of a ritual context, probably some kind of consummation ceremony, and that the site was selected because of the presence of footprints and was therefore considered vital to them.
“Traditionally, science has ignored and minimized Native American history and denied that Native and Indigenous peoples can make meaningful contributions because ‘their undeniable or primitive minds’ — according to scholars of the afterlife — would not be able to appreciate or take clinical insight. interest in fossil history. “
As for the practical implications, the study demonstrates that Native Americans did indeed locate fossils and that they had their own way of interpreting this herbal phenomenon, and that those fossils were vital to them. This is evidenced by the fact that they put a great deal of effort into creating many petroglyphs around the footprints, according to Troiano.
The results of the study imply that fossils have greater cultural significance than previously imagined, he said.
“A practical result of this is that those fossils can now be identified as Brazilian cultural heritage and simply as elements of clinical interest,” Troiano said.
“It’s just amazing to locate such ancient rock art along with superbly preserved dinosaur footprints, which are even more unfathomable!We now plan to go back and search for the site and its landscape as soon as possible, and we will be able to gather more information. about the ancient human organization responsible for the petroglyphs.
Aristos is a science journalist for Newsweek founded in London, UK. It reports on topics similar to science and health, including: animal-like stories, intellectual health, and psychology. Aristos joined Newsweek in 2018 from IBTimes UK and in the past worked at The World Weekly. He is a graduate of the University of Nottingham and the City University of London. Languages: English. You can contact Aristos by sending an email to a. georgiou@newsweek. com.