Tracking the Lone Ranger: Continuous Locomotor Variation Along a 158 m Theropod Trackway

Fossil trackways preserve sequential records of locomotion, but long trackways are rarely analysed step by step to test whether movement remained uniform. Here, publicly available georeferenced track overlays from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department were imported into a metre-scaled digital workspace to analyse the Lone Ranger theropod trackway, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Texas. Extending 158 m, with 158 of an estimated 188 footprints preserved, it is the longest theropod trackway documented along the Paluxy River. Stride length varies from 0.71 to 2.60 m, mean stride increases from 1.65 m in the first portion (LR-1) to 1.89 m in the second (LR-2), and heading shifts from southwestward to westward. Although the trackway is nearly straight overall (straightness index 0.957), heading changes by a mean of 6.0° (LR-1) and 5.9° (LR-2) between successive steps. An apparent left–right pace disparity in LR-2 is not significant and is absent from the longer LR-1, which could have detected it. Relative stride (0.50–1.84), based on an Acrocanthosaurus-derived hip height, indicates walking throughout, while stride-based velocity estimates range from 0.96 to 8.38 km/h. The trackway therefore records a stable walking gait whose registered geometry varied step by step. Long trackways can distinguish sustained locomotor patterns from local variation, and archival georeferenced records can serve as reusable datasets for quantitative ichnology.