Photo via Indiegogo/Research Dinosaur Tracks in NE BC
Photo via Indiegogo/Research Dinosaur Tracks in NE BC

A new dinosaur superhighway — featuring hundreds of footprints — has been discovered in British Columbia. And researchers have launched an Indiegogo campaign to save it.

According to Huffington Post Tech, the site features “Hundreds of prints from extinct carnivores and herbivores are pressed into the flat, rocky surface spanning an area the size of three Canadian football fields, indicating the site was a major dinosaur thoroughfare.”

The site, Peace River Canyon, is near Williston Lake in northeastern British Columbia, and local researchers at the Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre have launched a campaign to help recover and preserve the site. “From what I saw there is at least a score or more of trackways, so 20-plus trackways of different animals,” paleontologist Rich McCrea, one of the Indiegogo campaign creators, told HuffPo.

Photo via Indiegogo/Research Dinosaur Tracks in B.C.
Photo via Indiegogo/Research Dinosaur Tracks in B.C.

The area is part of a larger network of track sites that have been flooded and covered as a result of hydroelectric dams, many of the dinosaur tracks “entombed under what is now known as Dinosaur Lake,” the researchers state on their Indiegogo site. They received word of this new track site in the Peace Region in 2008. “This is the first large track surface to be found from this historic area since before the Peace River Canyon track sites were flooded,” the site reports.

While the area is not in danger of development or future flooding, the scientists want to protect as much of the track site as possible, with a “long-term goal to turn this site into a dinosaur track science outreach centre and tourist destination.”

They are seeking a little over $150,000 to fund their mission, which includes trucks, fuel, computer and 3D software and drone video production. The group’s parent organization, the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation, is a charity so donations are tax deductible, too.

If they are successful, the site will be one of the most significant dinosaur finds in the world.

“It would be one of the top sites, unquestionably,” McCrea told HuffPo. “It already looks like it’s going to be one of the biggest sites in Canada. That also means one of the biggest sites in the world.”

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