Anchorage - A recently discovered fossilised footprint shows that dinosaurs once roamed in what is now a national park in Alaska, scientists said on Tuesday.
The footprint, estimated to be 70 million years old, was discovered on June 27, the first evidence of dinosaurs ever found in Denali National Park and Preserve, the National Park Service said.
The find was made by a University of Alaska Fairbanks student attending a field camp in the park.
The three-toed track, six inches wide and nine inches long, appears to be from the left foot of a therapod, a class of two-legged predators, said Anthony Fiorillo, curator of the Dallas Museum of Natural History.
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"It looks like an oversized bird footprint, but it's the footprint of a meat-eating dinosaur," he told reporters.
It was the first evidence of a dinosaur from this era found in the interior of Alaska. Until now, most dinosaur track discoveries have been in the Colville River region near the Arctic coastline.
"It's not necessarily the track itself that's significant to us. It's where it is that has got us all excited. Because it's an opportunity in Denali to sample a completely different ecosystem to the one that we're working on along the Colville River," said Fiorillo.
Conditions on the frigid North Slope of Arctic Alaska were much warmer 70 million years ago and the area had temperatures usually above freezing, Fiorillo noted.
The National Park Service is working to preserve the fossil and the scientists are planning more dinosaur searches in the national park.
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