Drought Uncovers Dinosaur Tracks in US Park

A handout image obtained on August 23, 2022 courtesy of the Dinosaur Valley State Park shows dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago. Handout Dinosaur Valley State Park/AFP
A handout image obtained on August 23, 2022 courtesy of the Dinosaur Valley State Park shows dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago. Handout Dinosaur Valley State Park/AFP
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Drought Uncovers Dinosaur Tracks in US Park

A handout image obtained on August 23, 2022 courtesy of the Dinosaur Valley State Park shows dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago. Handout Dinosaur Valley State Park/AFP
A handout image obtained on August 23, 2022 courtesy of the Dinosaur Valley State Park shows dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago. Handout Dinosaur Valley State Park/AFP

A drought in Texas dried up a river flowing through Dinosaur Valley State Park, exposing tracks from giant reptiles that lived some 113 million years ago, an official said Tuesday.

Photos posted on Facebook show three-toed footprints leading down a dry tree-lined riverbed in the southern US state. It is "one of the longest dinosaur trackways in the world," a caption accompanying the images says.

Stephanie Salinas Garcia of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said dry weather made the tracks visible.

"Due to the excessive drought conditions this past summer, the river dried up completely in most locations, allowing for more tracks to be uncovered here in the park," she said.

"Under normal river conditions, these newer tracks are under water and are commonly filled in with sediment, making them buried and not as visible," AFP quoted Garcia as saying.

Most of the recently revealed tracks were made by Acrocanthosaurus, which weighed nearly seven tons (6,350 kilograms) as an adult and stood 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall.

Another dinosaur, Sauroposeidon, also left tracks in the park. It measured 60 feet tall and weighed 44 tons in adulthood.

The state park -- located in an inland area southwest of the city of Dallas -- was once on the edge of an ancient ocean, and dinosaurs left footprints in the mud, its website says.

While drought revealed the tracks, rain is in the forecast, meaning they will likely be covered once more.

"While they will soon be buried again by the rain and the river, Dinosaur Valley State Park will continue to protect these 113 million-year-old tracks not only for present, but future generations," Garcia said.



China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
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China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)

For a third day, extreme rainfall pounded the southern Chinese province of Hainan, known as China's "Hawaii", amid the transit of yet another tropical cyclone, leaving the island half-submerged in a year of record-breaking wet weather.

Cities in Hainan including Sanya, famed for its palm trees, seafront hotels and sandy beaches, remained waterlogged on Tuesday due to Tropical Storm Trami to the south. On Monday, Sanya logged 294.9mm (11.6 inches) of rainfall over a 24-hour window, the most for any day in October since 2000.

Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Sunday after a slow trek across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where it left at least 125 people dead and 28 missing. While Hainan did not take a direct hit from Trami, Chinese authorities took no chances, recalling all fishing vessels and evacuating over 50,000 people.

China's entire eastern coastline has been tested by extreme weather events this year - from the violent passage of Super Typhoon Yagi across Hainan in September to the strongest tropical cyclone to strike Shanghai since 1949. Scientists warn more intense weather is in the offing, spurred by climate change.

"In October, the national average precipitation was 6.3% higher than the same period in previous years," Jia Xiaolong, a senior official at the National Climate Centre, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Last week, the water along China's Bohai Sea inexplicably rose up to 160 cm (5.2 feet) in a matter of hours despite the absence of any wind, leading to a tidal surge that flooded the streets of Tianjin and many cities in the northern provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

"It's hard to imagine how much power was needed to push such a large area of sea water to one place," Fu Cifu, an official at the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, told state-run Xinhua news agency at the time.

China is historically no stranger to floods, but its prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure as record rains flood populous cities, ravage crops and disrupt local economies.

Amid disaster recovery efforts this summer, authorities had to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to support reconstruction in multiple regions from the south to the northeast of China.

In July, the country suffered 76.9 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) in economic losses from natural disasters, with 88% of those losses caused by heavy rains and floods from Typhoon Gaemi, the most for the month of July since 2021.