Sixty-six and a half million years after a Tyrannosaurus rex walked across a muddy coastal floodplain in what is now North Dakota, a high school science teacher named Kent Hups paused over two enormous three-toed impressions in the Hell Creek Formation and recognized them for what they were. Confirmed in 2025 and published in September 2026, the five-print trackway is the first known T. rex trackway ever documented — a rare convergence of preservation, patience, and curiosity that transforms a few seconds of ancient motion into something we can finally measure. Where bones tell us what a creat
Teacher's Discovery Yields First Known T. rex Trackway in Hell Creek Formation
The closest thing we have to a time machine
Mark
Why is a trackway so much more valuable than bones alone?
Mimi
Bones tell you what an animal looked like, how big it was, what it ate. A trackway shows you what it actually did—how fast it was moving, how it placed its feet, the rhythm of its walk. It's behavior frozen in time.
Luke
But we should be clear: this is one animal, one moment. We can't generalize about all T. rex from five footprints.
Mimi
Absolutely right. But it's the first moment we've ever captured directly. Before this, we had only two isolated prints, no sequence.
Mark
How certain are they that it's a T. rex and not something else?
Mimi
The size rules out most candidates. In the Hell Creek Formation, only T. rex and Edmontosaurus were large enough. But Edmontosaurus feet are very different—the anatomy doesn't match.
Luke
Still, they're working from what they think lived there. If there was another large predator they haven't found bones for, they might be wrong.
Mark
What does the walking speed tell us?
Mimi
That this particular animal was moving slowly, probably through soft mud. It wasn't hunting or fleeing. Just walking.
Luke
And we should note: that 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour is an estimate based on stride length. Different researchers might calculate it slightly differently.
Mark
What happens next?
Mimi
They're collecting the prints for more detailed analysis. And now that people know to look for trackways, they might find more.
Luke
Or they might not. Trackways are genuinely rare in this formation. This could be a one-off.
Der Puls
- A volunteer researcher's instinct to pause over two unusual rock impressions in Montana set in motion a discovery that paleontologists had never managed to make in over a century of searching the Hell Creek Formation.
- The rarity of preserved tracks in this region — where sediments typically erode before impressions can harden — made the find almost improbable, and even the confirming scientist initially demanded more evidence before he would believe it.
- A methodical excavation guided by geometry — marking where the next prints should logically fall — yielded not one but three additional footprints, building an undeniable sequence across ancient mud.
- The resulting data reveals a T. rex moving at 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour with a thirteen-foot stride, the first direct behavioral evidence of how this apex predator actually traveled through its world.
- Three of the prints are now being collected for museum analysis, and the published measurements give paleontologists worldwide a new template for identifying T. rex trackways that may have been hiding in plain sight.
Sixty-six and a half million years after a Tyrannosaurus rex walked across a muddy coastal floodplain in what is now North Dakota, a high school science teacher named Kent Hups paused over two enormous three-toed impressions in the Hell Creek Formation and recognized them for what they were. Confirmed in 2025 and published in September 2026, the five-print trackway is the first known T. rex trackway ever documented — a rare convergence of preservation, patience, and curiosity that transforms a few seconds of ancient motion into something we can finally measure. Where bones tell us what a creature was, footprints tell us what it was doing, and this discovery offers the closest thing science has yet found to watching the world's most iconic predator simply walk.
Kent Hups, a high school science teacher from Colorado and volunteer associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, was surveying the Hell Creek Formation in July 2025 when two massive three-toed impressions brought him to a standstill. The Hell Creek spans Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas and is rich in Late Cretaceous bones from 66.5 million years ago — but footprints are another matter. The region's sediments typically erode before tracks can fossilize, making preserved impressions extraordinarily rare. Hups sat with the prints for a long time before trusting what he was seeing.
The footprints measured roughly three feet long and two to two and a half feet wide. Their elongated middle digits and slender three-toed shape pointed to a meat eater, and in the Hell Creek Formation only one predator was large enough to leave such marks: a Tyrannosaurus rex. Still, Hups brought in Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum, who demanded more than two isolated prints before he would confirm a genuine trackway. Lyson marked where additional prints should fall if the animal had walked in a straight line. The team dug — and found them. A fifth print was located the following summer.
The discovery was published in September 2026 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. From four of the prints, researchers calculated a stride length of about thirteen feet and a walking speed of 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour — far below the animal's maximum, likely slowed by the soft, wet ground of what was once a lush coastal floodplain. Only two isolated T. rex footprints had ever been found before; a connected sequence reveals something no skeleton can: a few seconds of actual behavior. The Denver Museum plans to collect three prints for further analysis, including examination for possible skin impressions, while paleontologists worldwide now have the measurements they need to search for trackways that may have gone unrecognized for decades.
Kent Hups was walking through the Hell Creek Formation one July morning in 2025 when he spotted something that stopped him cold: two enormous footprints pressed into ancient rock. Hups is a high school science teacher from Northglenn, Colorado, and a volunteer research associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He had come to this fossil-rich landscape spanning Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota to look for evidence of life from 66.5 million years ago. What he found would turn out to be the first known trackway ever discovered from a Tyrannosaurus rex.
The Hell Creek Formation is famous among paleontologists for its abundance of dinosaur bones from the Late Cretaceous period, but footprints are another matter entirely. The sediments in this region typically eroded before tracks could harden and fossilize, making preserved trackways extraordinarily rare. When Hups first saw those two massive impressions with their distinctive three-pronged shape, his initial response was skepticism. He sat and studied them for a long time before he could convince himself they were genuine traces at all.
The footprints measured roughly three feet long and two to two and a half feet wide. Hups knew that when a track is longer than it is wide, the animal that made it was almost certainly a meat eater. The size alone narrowed the possibilities dramatically. In the Hell Creek Formation, only two dinosaurs were large enough to leave such marks: a Tyrannosaurus rex or an Edmontosaurus, the duck-billed herbivore. But the anatomy was unmistakable—the three slender toes and the elongated middle digits matched what scientists knew of T. rex feet.
Hups brought in Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum, to verify the discovery. Lyson was cautious. Rocks weather into countless shapes over millions of years, and he wanted more than two isolated prints to confirm this was a genuine trackway. He marked an X in the dirt where additional footprints should logically appear if the dinosaur had been walking in a straight line, and the team began to dig. They found not just one more print, but two more. By the summer following the initial discovery, they had located a fifth footprint. The pattern was unmistakable. This was a T. rex that had walked across soft, muddy earth in what was then a lush, swampy coastal floodplain.
The discovery was published in September 2026 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. What makes this finding significant is not just that it is the first T. rex trackway ever confirmed, but what it reveals about the dinosaur's actual movement. Scientists had previously found only two isolated T. rex footprints—one discovered by a U.S. Geological Survey geologist in New Mexico in 1994, and another reported from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 2008. A connected sequence of prints tells a different story than scattered bones ever could.
From the four footprints documented in the study, researchers calculated that the T. rex had a stride length of about thirteen feet and was walking at a speed of roughly 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour. That pace is far below the dinosaur's maximum speed, but it represents the first direct evidence of how a T. rex actually moved through its world. The soft, wet soil where the tracks formed would have slowed any animal down; on firmer ground, the predator could have moved much faster. Still, the trackway captures something that no skeleton can: a few seconds of actual behavior from 66.5 million years ago.
Hups reflected on the significance of the find in an email, saying he hoped the discovery would encourage others to look more carefully at unusual rock formations and that it might lead to a deeper understanding of ancient life. He called it the closest thing we have to a time machine. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science plans to collect three of the prints from North Dakota for further analysis, examining them for possible tissue and skin impressions. Other paleontologists around the world now have the measurements and details they need to study how this apex predator moved and to search for similar trackways that may have been overlooked in the past.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
My first reaction was total disbelief. I sat and looked at it for a period of time before I was convinced it was a track at all.— Kent Hups, on first spotting the footprints
Any trackway provides a record of real behaviour that their bones cannot: a few seconds of life, 66.5 million years ago.— Dr. Anthony Romilio, paleontologist at the University of Queensland
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