Located 440 km from João Pessoa, Capital of Paraiba State and around 430 km from Natal, Rio Grande do Norte State, the city of Sousa, with a population of approximately 70,000 inhabitants and an economy based on agriculture and services also entered the tourist destination with the discovery of the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs by around 1897, when farmer Anísio Fausto da Silva discovered the footprints while he worked, at first he observed two tracks of large and small footprints in the dry river bed and he thought they were footprints of an ox and an emu. But in 1924 a mining geologist called Luciano Jaquis de Morais, who worked in the former Inspection of Works Against Drought, heard this story and decided to know the footprints. As soon as he saw them, he realized that it was not an ox and an emu or any other animal from this days. He took several pictures and sent them to a research laboratory in England. The answer was surprising: the trails are dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period (110 million years ago), and in perfect state of conservation.
After that was found in this region other different sites where are fossilized footprints, there are more than 70 locations with footprints around the city of Sousa.
Today the most visited is the archaeological site Passagem de Pedra, where are the most significant footprints of the region and that counts on an excellent infrastructure for the visitors. The Valley of the Dinosaurs, well known, is open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 08:00 to 17:00 and beyond the footprints, has a museum with various explanatory panels, sidewalks and walkways for visitation.