Workers pan for diamonds in a government controlled diamond mine June 15, 2001, near Kenema, Sierra Leone.
Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images
Octávio Mateus, Professor of Paleontology at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and mine geologist Vladimir Pervo discovered the footprints of dinosaurs, a large mammal, and ancient crocodiles all in the same place in the Catoca diamond mine in Angola. The prints are 118 million years old. The discovery was presented at the Nov. 5, 2014, session of the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Berlin.
It is exceedingly rare to find the footprints of three different ancient species in the same location. The diamond mine at Catoca contains plumes of volcanic ejecta that preserved the ancient footprints. The diamond mine shut down operation for almost eight months to allow the scientists to identify and collect the footprints.
The mammal footprints indicate that mammals about the same size as modern raccoons were thriving alongside dinosaurs and ancient crocodiles in Africa. The only other mammal that has ever been found that dates to this period of time was found in China and is about five million years older than the Angolan mammal. Eighteen sauropod footprints including a well-preserved skin impression and the prints of a crocodilomorph, one of the most ancient African relatives of modern crocodiles, were found within a few yards of the mammal tracks.
These footprints are the first evidence of ancient life ever found in the interior of Angola. The PaleoAngola Project coordinated the cooperation of scientists from several parts of the world and the mine operations to allow the recovery of this rare discovery. The Catoca mine is the fourth largest diamond mine in the world.
