Britain: About 200 dinosaur prints were found in an old quarry – Video

Nearly 200 dinosaur prints were discovered in the summer at an old Oxfordshire quarry, in southeastern England, in the largest area with such footprints that have been identified to date in Britain, Oxford and Birmingham universities announced today. The striking footprints left five dinosaurs, 166 million years ago. The discovery will be featured in the BBC’s archaeological show Digging for Britain on January 8.

The longest “path” carved by one of these dinosaurs reaches a length of 150 meters. The Diwars Farm quarry was a real “dinosaurus highway” where carnivorous and herbivorous animals intersected with each other, during the Middle Jurassian period.

photo: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

” It is very rare to find such a large number of prints at the same point and paths of such length,” explained Emma Nichols, a paleontologist specialized in vertebrates, at the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oxford. Dewars Farm may be one of the world’s largest footprint sites, it added.

The first tracks were spotted in June by Gary Johnson, a mine excavator operated by Smiths Bletchington.

” I realized I was the first person to see them, it was surreal,” he commented on BBc.

Over the next few days, about 100 people participated in the excavations, which were supervised by the two universities, at a point that was once a shallow lake with warm waters.

NEW: In a stunning find, researchers from Oxford University and @univirmingham have uncovered a huge expansion of garden floor filled with hungreds of different dinosaur footprints, creating multiple instrumental trackways. pic.twitter.com/8 ZF590BVII

— University of Oxford (@UniofOxford) January 2, 2025

Scientists do not know what it was that helped sustain the traces left by dinosaurs in the mud. “Maybe in some storm sediments were deposited that helped their hardening,” speculates Richard Butler, a paleobiologist at the University of Birmingham.

The four paths were carved by sauropods, vegetarian dinosaurs with a long neck, probably of the species Kitiosaurus. These dinosaurs reached a length of 18 meters and their fingerprints resemble those of the elephant – only they are much larger. The fifth path was probably left by a large lizard, the largest sarcophagus animal of the Jurassian period in England. The big lizard was bipedal and his tracks stand out clearly from their three fucking fingers. The mine was photographed with the help of drones, in order to create a 3D model and maintain this extraordinary discovery. In 1997 some 40 traces of dinosaurs had been found nearby, but this site is no longer accessible today and the data collected is limited.

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