Cal Orcko: The World's Largest Dinosaur Tracksite
Cal Orcko — a limestone cliff 5 km from Sucre — has the world's largest and most diverse dinosaur tracksite; more than 5,000 individual footprints from at least 294 different dinosaurs were made 68 million years ago when the surface was a lake shore
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5,000 Dinosaur Footprints
Cal Orcko Rock - 80 meters high and 1.2 km long - preserves more than 5,000 individual dinosaur footprints from the Late Cretaceous period (68 million years ago); the tracks were made on the muddy shore of a lake; subsequent geological tilting raised the surface to nearly vertical, making the tracks visible from a distance
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294 different dinosaurs
The Cal Orcko tracks have been attributed to at least 294 individual dinosaurs from multiple species—including titanosaurs, sauropods (the largest animals to walk the earth), ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, and theropods (possibly including the T. rex family); the diversity of species represented at a single site has no equivalent in the fossil record
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Longest Sauropod Track
The Cal Orcko site includes the longest sauropod (giant dinosaur) track in the world - a series of footprints belonging to a young titanosaur that followed its mother more than 350 meters along the ancient lakeshore; the trackway tells a story about a specific family relationship from 68 million years ago
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Cretacico Park
Parque Cretácico – built next to Cal Orcko's cement quarry where the tracks were discovered – has life-size dinosaur models, an interpretive museum and guided tours of the rock; the park's educational experience provides context for the extraordinary raw natural phenomenon of the trail rock
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Quarry Discovery
The Cal Orcko tracks were discovered in 1994 when cement quarry workers blasting the limestone bedrock exposed the track surface; the discovery prompted Bolivia to stop quarrying and establish the Parque Cretácico; the cement factory remains adjacent to the track site, creating an ongoing tension between industrial activity and fossil preservation
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Geological Slope
The Cal Orcko tracks were made on a horizontal lakeshore - the near-vertical angle of the present rock face is the result of 68 million years of Andean tectonic uplift and tilting; the geological process that raised the Andes from sea level to 4,000 m also tilted the lakeshore sediments to near vertical, inadvertently creating the world's best dinosaur track