Palaeontology

Major new dinosaur footprint fossil site discovered in England

By T.K. Randall
January 2, 2025 ·  1 comment

Image Credit: Emma Nicholls / Oxford University Museum of Natural History Something very large walked across a shallow lagoon in what is now a limestone quarry in modern day Oxfordshire, England some 166 million years ago.

The discovery, which was made during routine excavation work, is believed to be the largest dinosaur footprint site ever found in the UK and one of the largest such sites anywhere in the world.

The 200 footprints, which are comprised of multiple criss-crossing sets of tracks, were left by two types of dinosaur - a long-necked sauropod known as Cetiosaurus and a smaller meat-eater known as Megalosaurus.

So far the tracks have been found stretching over 150 meters, but because only a small section of the area has actually been excavated, it is possible that there could be a lot more of them."I was basically clearing the clay, and I hit a hump, and I thought it's just an abnormality in the ground," said Gary Johnson, a quarry worker who was the first to discover the tracks.

"But then it got to another, 3m along, and it was a hump again. And then it went another 3m - hump again. I thought I'm the first person to see them. And it was so surreal - a bit of a tingling moment, really."

After the discovery, a team of more than 100 scientists and students descended on the quarry to further excavate the tracks.

"This is one of the most impressive track sites I've ever seen, in terms of scale, in terms of the size of the tracks," said micropalaeontologist Prof Kirsty Edgar from the University of Birmingham.

"You can step back in time and get an idea of what it would have been like, these massive creatures just roaming around, going about their own business."


Source: BBC News | Comments (1)

Tags: Dinosaur