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Nature Science Alert has a story about sauropods. Some strange footprints, found near Bandera, Texas back in the 1930's, could show swimming behavior in sauropods. That theory dates to a letter written by Roland T. Bird in 1940 about front foot only prints made by sauropods. A paper in 2019 reexamined the question, but at a different locality - Coffee Hollow, part of the Glen Rose Formation. That locality was discovered in 2007 and dates to the Cretaceous Period.
"They were all typical forefeet impressions as if the animal had just been barely kicking bottom."
With time, Bird's interpretation of these manus-only tracks fell out of favor, as modern paleontology came to realize that sauropods were primarily land animals, not aquatic as was once thought.
The alternative view to explain manus-only tracks like this is that the forefeet of sauropods (supporting more of the animals' body weight) are all that leaves track marks on certain kinds of ground surfaces, as the rear limbs, supporting less weight, leave less impression on soil and sediment.
While that might now be the generally preferred interpretation of manus-only sauropod tracks, the case for dinosaurs treading through shallow, shoulder-height bodies of water on their front limbs (with their rear limbs not reaching the ground) has never been definitively ruled out.
