Britain’s largest dinosaur footprints ever have been unearthed

Britain’s largest dinosaur footprint to date has been discovered in a quarry in Oxfordshire.

Around 200 huge footprints, which were created 166 million years ago, run through the limestone soil.

They reveal the comings and goings of two different types of dinosaurs, thought to be a long-necked sauropod called Cetiosaurus and the smaller, flesh-eating Megalosaurus.

The longest tracks are 150 m long, but could be much longer as only part of the quarry has been excavated.

“This is one of the most impressive track sites I have ever seen in terms of the scale and size of the tracks,” said Prof Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham.

“You can go back in time and imagine what it would have been like if these huge creatures were just roaming around, going about their own business.”

The tracks were first discovered by Gary Johnson, a worker at Dewars Farm Quarry, while driving an excavator.

“I was basically clearing away the clay and I came across a hump and I thought it was just an anomaly in the ground,” he said, pointing to a ridge where some mud had been pushed up by the foot of a dinosaur into the earth pressed.

“But then it came again, 10 feet along, and it was a hump again. And then it went another 3 m – another hump.”

In the 1990s, another track site had been found nearby, so he realized that the regular bumps and dips could be dinosaur footprints.

“I thought I would be the first to see her. And it was so surreal – really a thrilling moment,” he told BBC News.

This summer more than 100 scientists, students and volunteers took part in an excavation at the quarry, the subject of the new series Digging for Britain.

The team found five different tracks.

Four of them were made by sauropods, herbivorous dinosaurs that walked on four legs. Their footprints are similar to those of an elephant – only much, much larger – these animals reached a length of up to 18 m.

Another track is believed to have been created by a Megalosaurus.

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

“It’s what we call a tridactyl print. He has these three toes that are very, very clear in the print.”

The carnivorous creatures, which walked on two legs, were agile hunters, she said.

“The entire animal would have been 6 to 9 m long. They were the largest predatory dinosaurs we know of from the Jurassic period in Britain.”

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

“Something must have happened to preserve these in the fossil record,” said Prof Richard Butler, a paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham.

“We don’t know exactly what, but it could be that a storm came in that deposited a lot of sediment on the footprints and caused them to be preserved rather than simply washed away.”

During the excavation, the team examined the tracks in detail. Not only did they make casts of the tracks, but they also took more than 20,000 photos to create 3D models of both the entire site and individual footprints.

“The really nice thing about a dinosaur footprint, particularly when you have a track, is that it is a snapshot in the life of the animal,” Prof Butler explained.

“You can learn things about how this animal moved. You can find out exactly what the environment in which it lived looked like. Traces provide us with completely different information that cannot be obtained from bone fossils.”

In one area of ​​the site you can even see where the paths of a sauropod and a megalosaurus once crossed.

The prints are so beautifully preserved that the team was able to figure out which animal got through first – they assume it was the sauropod, as the leading edge of its large, round footprint is slightly dented by the three-toed Megalosaurus walking on top of it .

“Knowing that this single dinosaur walked across this surface and left this exact imprint is so exhilarating,” said Dr. Duncan Murdock from Oxford University.

“You can imagine it making its way through the mud, pulling its legs out of the mud.”

The future fate of the tracks has not yet been decided, but scientists are working with Smiths Bletchington, the quarry operator, and Natural England on ways to preserve the site for the future.

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

The excavation is presented on Looking for Britain on BBC Two on Wednesday 8 January at 8pm. The full series will be available on BBC iPlayer on January 7th.