MASSIVE DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS DISCOVERED IN UK QUARRY
It might be more difficult to understand that dinosaurs once roamed the same places where we live and work today, even though many people are familiar with their appearance and size. Recently, the largest dinosaur trackway in UK history was discovered in a quarry. It is a "dinosaur highway" made up of nearly 200 footprints spread across several paths across the limestone ground.
While operating an excavator in Oxfordshire, Gary Johnson discovered the footprints. When I hit a hump while essentially clearing the clay, I assumed it was just an anomaly in the ground. However, it reached another hump three meters (10 feet) along, and it was a hump once more. He tells the BBC, "And then it went another three meters—hump again." He was right to wonder if they might be dinosaur footprints, given the history of discoveries in the region. "I believed I was the first to notice them. And it was really kind of a tingling moment—so strange.
As a result, a group of more than 100 scientists and volunteers from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham discovered five trackways. To build 3D models of the location and individual footprints, the researchers cast the tracks and took thousands of photos. Because the area was covered by a shallow lagoon, scientists think dinosaurs walked in the mud and left their footprints. However, the exact cause of the footprints' preservation is still unknown. According to one theory, the footprints may have been prevented from being washed away by sediments that were deposited on top of them during a storm.
The footprints are from the Middle Jurassic Period, some 166 million years ago. They are so well preserved, to the researchers' delight, that they were able to identify the specific species that departed. According to a statement from Dr Duncan Murdock, Earth Scientist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH), "the preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur's feet squelched in and out."
These imprints belong to two different dinosaur species: the Megalosaurus, a smaller carnivore dinosaur with large, clawed feet, and the Cetiosaurus, a massive sauropod with a long neck. The fact that their paths crossed once is among the most exciting aspects of the discovery. According to Dr Emma Nicholls, Vertebrate Paleontologist at OUMNH, "Though scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found."
Five paths—four from the Cetiosaurs and one from the Megalosaurus—have been discovered thus far. Although the longest trackway is 492 feet long, more research could lead to much greater length. According to Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontologist at the University of Birmingham, "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." "You can travel back in time to get a sense of what it would have been like to see these enormous animals simply wandering around and going about their daily lives."
Ultimately, the discovery opens new possibilities in the world of palaeontology, as it offers a different insight into the lives of these creatures. “You can learn things about how that animal moved. You can learn exactly what the environment that it was living in was like. So tracks give us a whole different set of information that you can't get from the bone fossil record,” concludes Richard Butler, a paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham. “The really lovely thing about a dinosaur footprint, particularly if you have a trackway, is that it is a snapshot in the life of the animal.”