When dinosaurs ruled earth: How 200 footprints give a glimpse into our prehistoric past

When dinosaurs ruled the earth the Home Counties would probably be the last place you might expect to find them.

But 166 million years ago these giant beasts roamed freely around what is now Oxfordshire, the genteel and refined county that includes the Dreaming Spires of Oxford.

Some 200 giant footprints have been unearthed at a quarry north of the university city in one of the most important paleontology discoveries of recent decades.

Together they have given scientists a tantalising peek into our prehistoric past and the comings and goings of the monsters – including the long-necked sauropod Cetiosaurus and the smaller but equally fearsome meat-eating Megalosaurus – that once conquered all they surveyed.

Dr Duncan Murdock from the University of Oxford said: “Knowing that this one individual dinosaur walked across this surface and left exactly that print is so exhilarating. You can sort of imagine it making its way through, pulling its legs out of the mud as it was going.”

The tracks criss-cross the limestone floor with experts believing a major meteorological event helped pristinely preserve them in fossils. One theory is a storm deposited sediment on top of the footprints and, rather than washing them away, simply preserved them in time.

Professor Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham, said: “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.”

The longest trackways are 150m in length, but they could extend much further as only part of Dewars Farm Quarry, north of the university city, has been excavated.

The carnivorous creatures, which walked on two legs, were expert hunters, and up to 9m in length. They were among the largest predatory dinosaurs in the Jurassic period in Britain.

In the middle to late Jurassic period they lived near a warm, shallow lagoon, leaving their prints as they strode across the mud.

Last summer more than 100 scientists, students and volunteers joined a dinosaur dig and found five different trackways.

Four of them were made by sauropods, plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on all fours. The name Cetiosaurus means whale lizard and translates from Greek meaning sea monster.

Their footprints resemble an elephant’s – only much much larger – with the creatures reaching up to 18m in length.

Another track is thought to have been created by a Megalosaurus meaning great lizard. These beasts were about half the length of the fabled T Rex.

Dr Emma Nicholls, a palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: “It’s almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprint. It’s what we call a tridactyl print. It’s got these three toes that are very, very clear in the print.”

The first fossilised remains of the nine-metre-long Jurassic carnivore were discovered in the late 18th century in the nearby village of Stonesfield.

Other dinosaurs found in t he county include Cumnoria and Eustreptospondylus and all date from the middle to late Jurassic period (around 170–150 million years ago) when the area had a much warmer climate. As well as dinosaurs, what is now Oxfordshire was also home to pterosaurs and small mammals.

Fossilised remains of each are among prized exhibits at the musuem.

The tracks were first spotted by stunned digger driver Gary Johnson, who said: “I was basically clearing the clay, and I hit a hump, and I thought it was 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.”

* The incredible discovery features on the new series of Digging for Britain on Two at 2000 on January 8 with the full series available on iPlayer on January 7.