Scientists have discovered the first known trackway made by an adult Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) in the badlands of southwestern North Dakota. The find, dating back approximately 66.5 million years, provides a unique behavioral snapshot of the massive dinosaur near the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The trackway, measuring roughly 23 feet in length, consists of four connected, three-toed footprints. Researchers from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Liverpool John Moores University in England identified the prints in Slope County on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands. The spacing between the individual prints suggests a stride of about 13 feet and an estimated walking speed of 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour.

"Bones tell us an enormous amount about these animals, but footprints capture a moment of behavior," said Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. "With a trackway, we can actually follow an animal as it moved across the landscape. That is incredibly rare for T. rex."

The discovery was made in 2025 within the Hell Creek Formation, a geological area known for Upper Cretaceous and Lower Paleocene rocks. According to the study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, large theropod tracks have been uncommon in this formation, and clear evidence of adult T. rex tracks had not previously been established.

The first-ever adult T. rex trackway discovered by scientists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Liverpool John Moores University in England is pictured on July 6, 2026.

Using 3D scanning technology, the research team meticulously documented the trackway in the field. Peter Falkingham, a professor of paleobiology at Liverpool John Moores University and lead author of the study, utilized this digital data to analyze the prints remotely. The researchers also found skeletal elements of T. rex in the vicinity, which further corroborated their findings.

The tracks are preserved as fine-grained sandstone concretions cemented with calcium carbonate, which nucleated around footprint depressions, according to the article.

The trackway's age places it just before the asteroid impact that is widely believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The footprints are slated for recovery in the fall and will be transported to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for further study and preservation.