As more research is uncovered, the more we realise how little we know about dinosaurs. First we learned that the best known dinosaurs like the T Rex, Triceratops and Brontosaurus didn’t live during the same time period. Now it’s just been discovered that dinosaur stampedes never happened!
Australia’s Dinosaur Stampede National Monument was long considered to be the site of a huge stampede featuring numerous dinosaurs, most likely being chased by a carnivorous predator.
Recently it’s been discovered that predators seldom ever chased their prey like it’s often depicted in the movies, so what we’ve thought was a stampede all this time isn’t anything even close to it.
The location of the monument has a number of different dinosaur foot prints and markings and paleontologists have now concluded that the site once was the spot of an ancient channel with differing water levels. While crossing this channel, as most dinosaurs often had to, they would either walk or run, drag their bodies across or swim across.
The foot prints and markings previously thought to be from a stampede are now known to just be relics of different dinosaurs crossing the channel at different times!
While the idea of a blood thirsty T.Rex chasing its prey is a lot more interesting than a bunch of dinosaurs just swimming across a channel, this discovery is important since it shed light on just how many dinosaurs were actually able to swim.