Alaska Dinosaur Tracks: Thousands of Footprints Found Along Yukon River

Alaska was apparently home to many dinosaurs as dinosaur tracks have recently been found in the state in thousands.

Researchers may have just hit a dinosaur jackpot in Alaska as thousands of fossilized dinosaur tracks of all sizes were found along the banks of the Yukon River, LifeScience reports.

Researchers from the University of Alaska Museum of the North set out of a 500-mile trip in July along the Tanana and Yukon rivers. What they brought home back 2,000 pounds worth of footprint fossils.

"We found dinosaur footprints by the scores on literally every outcrop we stopped at," expedition researcher Paul McCarthy, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said according to LifeScience. "I've seen dinosaur footprints in Alaska now in rocks from southwest Alaska, the North Slope and Denali National Park in the Interior, but there aren't many places where footprints occur in such abundance."

Dinosaur footprints have been found around Denali National Park over the last decade. The tracks were found in rocks that were as much as 80 million years old. The prints that were found along the Yukon River may only be 30 million years old. The fossils were made after dinosaurs stepped in mud and they were filled with sand. They now look like blobs with toes.

"It took several years of dedicated looking before the first footprint was discovered in Denali in 2005, but since that time hundreds of tracks of dinosaurs and birds have been found," McCarthy explained to LifeScience "In contrast, the tracks were so abundant along the Yukon River that we could find and collect as many as 50 specimens in as little as 10 minutes."

According to Pat Druckenmiller, the museum's earth sciences curator, a find liks this is hard to come by.

"This is the kind of discovery you would have expected in the Lower 48 a hundred years ago," Druckenmiller said in a statement. "We found a great diversity of dinosaur types, evidence of an extinct ecosystem we never knew existed."

Much more research has to be done involving the finding and scientists are working with local villages and Native groups to plan future expeditions.