The UK’s biggest ever dinosaur trackway site has been discovered in a quarry in Oxfordshire. (Image: BBC/Kevin Church)
A group of paleontologists has discovered huge footprints in a quarry in Oxfordshire. Around 200 huge tracks, made 166 million years ago, crisscross the limestone floor.
They provide evidence of the movements of two distinct types of dinosaurs, believed to be the long-necked sauropod Cetiosaurus and the smaller carnivorous Megalosaurus.
The longest trackways measure 150 metres, though they may extend significantly farther, as only a portion of the quarry has been excavated, reports the .
Gary Johnson, a worker at Dewars Farm Quarry, first spotted the track while he was driving a digger.
He told the : “I was basically clearing the clay, and I hit a hump, and I thought it’s just an abnormality in the ground. But then it got to another, 3m along, and it was a hump again. And then it went another 3m – hump again.”
Prof Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham, added: “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 step back in time and get an idea of what it would have been like, these massive creatures just roaming around, going about their own business.”
Over 100 scientists, students, and volunteers participated in an excavation at the quarry this summer, which is showcased in the new series of Digging for Britain.
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The team uncovered five distinct trackways. Four of these were made by sauropods, plant-eating, four-legged dinosaurs whose footprints resemble those of elephants—though far larger—left by creatures up to 18 metres long.
The fifth trackway is believed to have been created by a Megalosaurus.
Dr Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, told the : “It’s almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprints. It’s what we call a tridactyl print. It’s got these three toes that are very, very clear in the print.”
The carnivorous creatures, which walked on two legs, were agile hunters and Britain’s largest predatory dinosaurs in the Jurassic period, she said. The Megalosaurus which made the footprints would have been between six and nine metres in length.