Fossilized footprints on a beach in Germany detail how two dinosaurs once went for a walk in tandem some 142 million.
According to Live Science, the footprints belong to a large dinosaur and a small one belonging to the Megalosauripus genus, with the latter apparently speeding up intermittently to keep pace. The prints also show some slippage, indicated the sand was wet at the time.
The researchers who detailed the fossil revealed their findings at the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontology.
"As a biologist, I can contribute with knowledge about behavior of the individual animals," Pernille Venø Troelsen, of the University of Southern Denmark, said in a press release.
The large dinosaur was about 5.2 feet tall and the smaller one was 3.6 feet, roughly the size of a Velociraptor, and were also likely hunters who walked on two hind legs.
"If so, this may illustrate two social animals, perhaps a parent and a young," Troelsen said in the release.
The researchers also noted they could not definitively state these footprints were made at the same time, but if they did they would have been made during the Lower Cretaceous Period.
"There may be many years apart, in which case it maybe reflects two animals randomly crossing each other's tracks," Troelsen said. "We can also see that a duckbill dinosaur (Iguanodon) has crossed their tracks at one time or another, so there has been some traffic in the area."
