Hundreds of dinosaur footprints found in UK quarry

LONDON: Researchers have uncovered hundreds of dinosaur footprints dating back to the middle Jurassic era in a quarry in Oxfordshire, southern England, showing that reptiles such as the 9m predator Megalosaurus moved along enormous tracks.

The dig at Dewars Farm Quarry found five extensive trackways, one of which measured more than 150m in length, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham said today.

Four of the tracks were made by gigantic, long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs called sauropods, most likely to be Cetiosaurus, an up to 18m-long cousin of the well-known Diplodocus, they said.

The fifth trackway was made by the carnivorous theropod dinosaur Megalosaurus, which had distinctive three-toed feet with claws.

The carnivore and herbivore tracks, which are about 166 million years old, cross over at one point, raising questions about whether and how the two types of dinosaur were interacting, the researchers said.

Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named and described in 1824, kick-starting the last 200 years of dinosaur science and public interest.

Emma Nicholls, vertebrate palaeontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: “Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found.”

The buried prints came to light when quarry worker Gary Johnson felt “unusual bumps” as he was stripping the clay back with his vehicle in order to expose the quarry floor.

More than one hundred researchers then excavated the site in June, where they found around 200 footprints, the universities said in a statement.