The hidden dinosaur tracks rewriting the history of southern Africa
For decades, a massive volcanic event seemed to have erased the dinosaur record in southern Africa. But new discoveries near the Western Cape coast are proving that life continued long after the lava flows, revealing a vibrant Cretaceous landscape once thought lost to time.
A massive era of volcanic activity roughly 182 million years ago, known as the Drakenssebberg Group eruptions, covered much of the inland Karoo Basin in lava. This event created a significant gap in the regional fossil record, leaving the Jurassic period—spanning from 201 to 145 million years ago—largely silent in the southern African geological narrative. For a long time, it appeared as though the dinosaur record in the region had simply vanished.
However, recent expeditions are uncovering evidence that contradicts this period of silence. In 2023, a team from the American Museum of Natural History, including Macaulay Curator Roger Benson and Curator Meng Jin, traveled to Qhemegha to investigate fossils of mammals, dinosaurs, and pseudosuchians. Their work aims to understand the mechanisms that allowed certain dinosaurs to survive mass extinctions 200 million years ago while other reptiles perished.
Even more striking is a recent find near Knysna in the Western Cape. During a 2025 survey of the Brenton Formation, researchers discovered over two dozen probable dinosaur tracks in a small, 40-meter-long stretch of rock. These tracks are estimated to be 132 million years old, making them the youngest dinosaur tracks ever identified in southern Africa. This discovery, following the 2025 report of 140-million-year-old tracks in the same province, confirms a significant dinosaur presence during the Cretaceous period, long after the inland lava flows had settled.
Source: Digging the Dinosaurs of South Africa
