Britain’s largest ever dinosaur footprint trackways discovered

BBC/Kevin Church A single track of giant dinosaur footprints - like giant craters in the ground leading into the distance in the white sandy rock excavation, clearly shows that a giant dinosaur walked this way. . Three black buckets and one yellow bucket stand in the distance, indicating that people are working on the side. A raised bluff of dark green vegetation borders the quarry on one side in the distance to the right. — These footprints were made 166 million years ago when a dinosaur walked across a lake.

Britain’s largest ever dinosaur trackway site has been discovered in a quarry in Oxfordshire.

About 200 giant footprints, made 166 million years ago, crisscross the limestone floor.

They reveal the comings and goings of two different types of dinosaurs, thought to be the long-necked sauropods called Sittosaurus and the smaller meat-eating Megalosaurus.

The longest trackways are 150 meters long, but they can go much further as only part of the mine is excavated.

“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 Professor Christy Edgar, a micropaleontologist at the University of Birmingham.

“You can step back in time and imagine what it must have been like, these massive creatures just going about their business.”

Scientists believe that these distinctive three-toed prints were made by Megalosaurus.

Richard Butler/University of Birmingham Four scientists in bright yellow high-visibility gear and helmets uncover 2-foot-wide three-toe prints in a gray-white ground. You can see more of them trailing in the distance. — Scientists believe that these distinctive three-toed prints were made by Megalosaurus.

The tracks were first noticed by Gary Johnson, a worker at Devers Farm Quarry, while he was driving an excavator.

“I was basically clearing the dirt, and I hit a hump, and I thought it was just an anomaly in the ground,” he said, pointing to a ridge where some mud had risen. is pushed toward like a dinosaur’s foot pressed into the ground.

“But then it got to another, 3m along, and it was a hump again. And then it went another 3m – hump again.”

Another trackway site was found nearby in the 1990s, so he realized that the regular bumps and dips could be dinosaur footprints.

“I thought I was the first person to see them. And it was so surreal – a really jarring moment,” he told BBC News.

Gary Johnson saw the tracks while he was working in the mine.

BBC/Kevin Church Gary Johnson A man in his sixties with a determined posture and a gray moustache, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and sand-covered boots with a white helmet, stands on one knee, one knee up. Along with the dinosaur footprints he found on the ground. They are the large craters of indistinct shape in this photo, running into the distance in the white-gray sand of a mine. Behind him on the right are two men in yellow high-visibility vests and hard hats standing with buckets on the ground. — Gary Johnson saw the tracks while he was working in the mine.

This summer, more than 100 scientists, students and volunteers joined the excavation of the mine, which is part of a new series of excavations for the UK.

The team found five different trackways.

Four of them were made by sauropods, plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on four legs. Their footprints look like those of an elephant – only much bigger – these beasts grow up to 18m in length.

Another track is thought to have been made by Megalosaurus.

“It’s almost like a dinosaur footprint,” explained Dr Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

“It’s what we call a tridactyl print. It has these three fingers that are very distinct in the print.”

He said the carnivorous creature, which walked on two legs, was an agile hunter.

“The whole animal would have been 6-9 meters long. They were the largest predatory dinosaurs we know of in Britain during the Jurassic period.”

Dinosaurs left their mark as they walked across a tropical lake.

Marc Vuitton An artist's impression, a drawn illustration, shows two dinosaurs walking a few meters apart on a white sandy beach. The giant is mostly blue-grey in color and walks on four legs. It has a long tail and a long neck that is red along with its head. The small dinosaur on the left near the deep blue sea, carnivorous, is green and white and walks on two legs. — Dinosaurs left their mark as they walked across a tropical lake.

The environment they lived in was covered by a warm, shallow lake, and dinosaurs left their prints as they walked across the mud.

“Something must have happened to preserve them in the fossil record,” said Professor Richard Butler, a paleontologist at the University of Birmingham.

“We don’t know exactly what, but it could be that there was a storm event, which deposited a load of sediment on top of the footprints, and that meant they just washed away. are safe instead.”

The team studied the trackways in detail during the excavation. As well as making a cast of the tracks, they took more than 20,000 photographs to create 3D models of both the complete site and individual footprints.

“The really beautiful thing about a dinosaur footprint, especially if you have a trackway, is that it’s a snapshot of the animal’s life,” Professor Butler explained.

“You can learn things about how the animal moves. You can find out what the environment was like. So the tracks give us a whole different set of information that You can’t get that from the fossil record of bones.”

The trackways form a prehistoric crossroads.

BBC/Kevin Church Qn overhead drone shot from about 200 meters above shows a large excavation with two sets of dinosaurs criss-crossing. There are several vehicles, a few tents and about 15 workers in yellow high-visibility clothing. — The trackways form a prehistoric crossroads.

The excavation took place during the summer.

BBC/Kevin Church In a gray sand quarry, a man wearing a yellow hard hat, yellow high-visibility vest and shorts works on one of the footprints, a large hole in the ground. . In front of him is a broom brush without a stick. It seems that he digs with a small stick-like tool. A little away from him lies a bucket and what looks like a steel brush. Farther away and out of focus, four more workers in high-visibility clothing do the same thing, three sitting, one standing. — The excavation took place during the summer.

Some trackways span up to 150 meters and may go further.

BBC/Kevin Church From about 20 meters up in the drone, a giant trackway of 14 three-toed dinosaur footprints stretches across the field of vision. A worker in a white hard hat and yellow high-visibility vest walks between the tracks in the center of the photo. His short sharp shadow and short arms suggest a sunny day and it is near noon. — Some trackways span up to 150 meters and may go further.

One area of the site even shows where the sauropod and megalosaurus paths crossed.

The prints are so beautifully preserved that the team was able to work out which animal had walked there first – they believe it was a sauropod, because the leading edge of its large, round footprints had three A toe-toed Megalosaurus falls down a bit. on top of that.

“Knowing that this individual dinosaur went to that level and left exactly the same print is very exciting,” said Dr Duncan Murdoch from the University of Oxford.

“You can imagine it making its way, pulling its legs out of the dirt as it went.”

The future fate of the trackways has yet to be decided but scientists are working with Smiths-Bletchington, who run the mine, and with Natural England on options to preserve the site for the future. are doing

They believe there may be more footprints, echoes of our prehistoric past, just waiting to be discovered.

The dig is shown on Digging for Britain on BBC Two on Wednesday 8 January at 20:00. The full series will be available on BBC iPlayer on January 7.

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Britain’s largest ever dinosaur footprint trackways discovered

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