Q&A: Western prof discovers dinosaur footprints in South Africa [Video]

A retired professor from Western University and his collaborators have identified footprints of dinosaurs in South Africa that date back to the Cretaceous period. The 140-million-year-old tracks were identified by Guy Plint, a professor emeritus of earth sciences, who travelled to the Western Cape province of South Africa in October 2023.

Plint joined London Morning to talk about the discovery with host Andrew Brown.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Brown: So, what took you to South Africa?

Guy Plint: It’s a bit of a complicated story. I had been working for a number of years in northern British Columbia with a colleague who is originally South African. He was a medical doctor but retired from medicine to study dinosaur tracks in British Columbia and South Africa.

In doing so, he came across some rather strange rocks with peculiar deformation structures. These were Cretaceous-age rocks. Not really being a geologist, more of a medical man, he realized there was something interesting and got in …