On the outskirts of the city of Sucre, Bolivia, there is a large cement plant. When the quarry was expanded in 1985, miners discovered a huge vertical rock with thousands of fossilized dinosaur footprints in the area. This rock is called Cal Orko and is the largest fossilized dinosaur footprint in the world.
On a limestone slab 1.2 kilometers long and 80 meters high, more than five thousand footprints belonging to over 300 different types of dinosaurs were discovered. It used to be a lake shore that attracted a large number of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs. The animals' feet sank slightly in the soft soil of the coastline in warm and humid weather, leaving footprints that then “hardened” during later periods of drought. Then, over time, tectonic activity exerted force, lifting the coast and turning it into the steep cliff that it is today.
Dinosaur footprints were first discovered in 1985, but the importance of the find was only realized between 1994 and 1998, when a scientific team led by Swiss paleontologist Christian Meyer carefully examined the rock. The study of these tracks has provided a lot of information about the social behavior of dinosaurs. For example, on one of the sections of the rock, a chain of large footprints is visible, next to which there is a chain of small footprints. This indicates that the babies of some dinosaur species grew up alongside their parents, who were protecting their offspring. Also one of the interesting specimens is a single 347-meter chain of footprints belonging to a small tyrannosaurus.
To preserve this place, a park was opened here in 2006, which contains exact copies of the various types of dinosaurs that have left their mark on Cal Orco. There is also a thematic museum and an observation deck 150 meters from the cliff. It is from this perspective that Cal Orko's scale opens up.
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