Fossil dinosaur “trackways”, as scientists call them, were first found in the 1980s by Italian priest and paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi in what is today the city of Araraquara in São Paulo state.
Leonardi donated to the Brazilian Museum of Earth Sciences (MCTER) in 1984 one of the footprint specimens found in the so-called Botucatu Formation, a group of rocks formed by an ancient dune desert.
The footprints are different from those of all other known dinosaurs, said Rafael Costa, a paleontologist at MCutter.