The tracks aren’t much to look at. The quartet of meter-long footprints are rough, blobby, fractured mounds of stone. Look carefully and you can see the three cushioned toes in each trace, but no other detail.

In any other place and time, the identity of the trackmaker would be a mystery. Some immense theropod walked this way. But the short trackway was found in the 66.5 million-year-old rocks of North Dakota. Only one large dinosaur in the area could have left the tracks, a species whose bones are found in the surrounding stone. You already know who it is. The tracks were left by T. rex.

You’d think there’d be more T. rex tracks in the fossil record. The giant carnivore was extremely abundant and stalked mucky, muddy lowlands in the Late Cretaceous. The dinosaurs left new footprints behind every day, surely. But up until now, paleontologists have only described single footfalls. (A purported T. rex trackway on display at the Houston Museum of Nature and Science has yet to be formally written up.) The new find, documented in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is the first reliable report of a T. rex trackway.

The limited set of four footsteps doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know about T. rex. The animal was moving about four miles per hour, just a bit quicker than average human walking speed. The figure matches up with previous studies, and also how the great tyrannosaur looks. The dinosaur has the build of a power walker. A sprint would have been hard for the living animal, but a well-timed ambush always removed that concern.

We’re lucky to see these tracks at all. They are shaped sandstone within a broader layer of sandstone, held tight by concretions that formed around the dinosaur-made depressions. Somehow, 66.5 million years ago, calcium carbonate began to build up around the edges of the footprints. The initial formation accelerated the process, eventually forming a rind that was harder than the surrounding sandstone. The tracks were covered inside. Fast forward tens of millions of years. The long-buried rock layers are slowly shoved above the surface where sun, wind, rain, and ice can break up the sandstone. Enough seasons of scraping pass for the rock to be worn down around the footprint-bearing concretions, which protected the tracks for a longer period of time.

Erosion still got to the footprints. Perhaps, a few centuries ago, they would have preserved much more detail. But it’s still enough to know that T. rex walked there. That she lived.

Scribblings

• We’re just about a month away from the publication of Tyrant Lizard Queen! I’m so excited for you to finally read this one (or listen, if you prefer the audiobook read by Wren Mack). Pre-order in any format and you can get a signed book plate and some digital goodies by filling out this form.

• I’ve got some new fiction for you! In the latest issue of Plott Hound, “The Shearing Edge” is my love letter to The Secret of NIMH but with a Jurassic cast. I hope you like it.

• Speaking of extracurriculars, I also have an essay in the upcoming issue of Lilac Peril Press. The issue’s theme is Idols, and I just had to gush about the xenomorph queen from ALIENS. Love her so much.

• Diplodocus is an iconic American dinosaur, practically synonymous with the Bone Wars and museum competition to find the biggest dinosaur to bring in paying patrons. Now it’s been found in Spain, underscoring a transcontinental Jurassic exchange we still know little about.

• Can you tell I’ve been a little T. rex-focused lately? For premium subscribers, I went back to the dinosaur’s first starring role - The Ghost of Slumber Mountain.

• South America was a haven for some of the largest dinosaurs of all time. Eggshells reveal that some of these titanosaurs nested along the continent’s southern tip, among the coldest habitats sauropods ever inhabited. My latest for my lovely premium subscribers.

Stomping to a City Near You

• Tonight! I’ll be at Charm City Spec in Baltimore, MD to read from When the Earth Was Green! Details here.

  We have a T. rex! tour. When Tyrant Lizard Queen reaches you on October 27th, I’ll kick off an East Coast book tour to talk about Snaggletooth and her story. Here’s where I’ll be stopping:

• Launch day! October 27th I’ll be at the central Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, MD.

• October 28th at Scrawl Books in Reston, VA. This is a trivia night event, so make sure you’re ready for dino questions!

• November 4th I’ll be in Lewes, DE at the public library for a joint event with Browseabout books.

• November 5th I’ll be at Hive Mind Books, NYC!

• November 6th I’ll be at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA.

• December 2nd I’ll be at the Natural History Society of Maryland in Baltimor, MD.

If you’d like me to do an in-person or virtual event closer to you, encourage your local museum or library to get in touch.

Ear Perks

• Hearing politicians debate whether people like me deserve equal rights has become more than a little taxing lately. I want to yell until I can’t anymore. But I don’t think I could say it better than Jude Doyle does in this essay, and I immediately went back to watch Velvet Goldmine because of it.

• Remember the Creepshow 2 story “The Raft”? The Swallow sounds like a movie-length version, if you like some living, creeping ooze.

• “Noon of Night” is a gorgeous dinosaur short. And I’m not just saying that because it stars one of my favorites, Allosaurus.