A “dinosaur highway”
The longest of the tracks traced by one of them extends 150 meters long in the Dewars Farm quarry, a veritable “dinosaur highway” where herbivores and carnivores crossed paths during the Middle Jurassic period.
“It is very rare to find such large numbers in one place, and to discover such extensive tracks,” said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Oxford Natural History Museum. According to her, it could also be one of the largest footprint sites in the world.
The first of these were discovered in June by Gary Johnson, a worker who was working with a backhoe in this quarry operated by a company, Smiths Bletchington.
“It was surreal”
“I realized I was the first person to see them, it was surreal,” he told the BBC. In the days that followed, around 100 people took part in excavations supervised by the two universities, at the site of what was an ancient, shallow, warm-water lagoon.
Scientists do not know exactly what preserved these traces left in the mud, “but it could be that a storm deposited sediment on the footprints, which allowed them to freeze,” said Richard Butler, paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham.
Sauropods and a megalosaur
Four tracks were left by sauropods, long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs, probably of the Cetiosaurus species. These animals measured up to 18 meters long, and their footprints resemble those of an elephant – but much larger.
The fifth mark was probably left by a megalosaur, the largest Jurassic predator in England, which walked on two legs and whose three claws can clearly be seen in the ground.
This quarry was extensively photographed by drone to create 3D models and preserve this exceptional discovery. In 1997, another site with around forty footprints was discovered nearby, but it is no longer accessible today and the elements collected at the time are limited.
