science
A limping teacher spotted the T. rex trackway everyone missed
His knee slowed him down. That is why he looked closer.
Kent Hups was hobbling. A science teacher at Northglenn High School in Colorado and longtime volunteer with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, he had recently had a knee replaced, which made the steep terrain of a 2025 paleontology dig near Marmarth, North Dakota, hard going. So while everyone else scrambled up and down the hills, Hups searched slowly. About 23 feet away, he saw four enormous three-toed footprints in the rock, each roughly three feet long. Scientists believe they belonged to an adult Tyrannosaurus rex, and that they are connected into a single trackway. Before this, only two isolated adult T. rex footprints had ever been confirmed anywhere in the world, and neither showed how the animal moved. From the spacing, researchers estimate this one was walking 3.5 to 4.5 miles per hour, about a brisk human pace. "It's the closest you get to a time machine," Hups said. Back at his school's paleontology club, students painted a 3D model of one of the tracks.
