history

When you drive along the section of the Pyongyang-Kaesong Motorway in the area of Ryongok-ri, Phyongsan County, North Hwanghae Province, you can see a building between rocks exposed at the foot of a hill.

The building attracts the attention of passers-by as there stands a visual aid of dinosaur near it.

The building houses the footprint fossils of dinosaurs discovered in 1989.

The footprints are in two rows on a rock.

In a word, they are those made by two dinosaurs during their move.

One of the rows has 14 footprints and the other 16. This tells that the dinosaurs walked on two feet.

The 14 footprints are about 45 cm long, 40 cm wide and 4 cm deep and the distance between the right foot and the left one is about 80 to 90 cm.

And the 16 footprints with only the outlines of their soles are about 40 to 50 cm long and 35 to 38 cm wide and the distance between the right foot and the left one is about 55 to 65 cm.

All the footprints show no traces of their digits and claws.

Experts are of the opinion that the area was a muddy place 100 to 80 million years ago in the Mesozoic era, so the traces of the digits and claws might be filled up with mud.

The footprint fossils of dinosaurs prove that many big dinosaurs existed in Korea in the Mesozoic era. They were designated as natural monuments in 1990 for their great significance in the study of extinct animals and plants.