Dinosaur Footprints Found After Floods 

December 13, 2025

When several large, three-toed footprints were discovered embedded in rock on the banks of Big Sandy Creek in Austin after the massive July 4 floods, a county judge called the Jackson School of Geosciences in to investigate.  

Matthew Brown, the director of the vertebrate paleontology laboratory, and laboratory manager Kenneth Bader went to the scene and confirmed that the prints were left behind by dinosaurs that lived in the area about 115 million years ago.  

The footprints, which are about 20 inches long, were probably made by Acrocanthosaurus, a large carnivorous dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous. The researchers also identified additional prints found nearby as possibly belonging to a large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur called Paluxysaurus, which is the state dinosaur of Texas.   

Dinosaur tracks can be found across Central Texas. Brown said that the footprints revealed by the floodwaters may be related to a known dinosaur trackway in Leander.