the “surreal” discovery of nearly 200 dinosaur footprints

Nearly 200 dinosaur footprints were discovered this summer in a quarry in Oxfordshire (south-east England), on the largest site ever revealed in the United Kingdom, the universities of Oxford and Birmingham announced on Thursday . These impressive footprints left 166 million years ago by five dinosaurs will be revealed in the archeology show «Digging for Britain» January 8 on BBC Two.

The longest track made by one of them is 150 meters long in the Dewars Farm quarry, a real “dinosaur highway” where herbivores and carnivores interbred during the Middle Jurassic period. “It is very rare to find such large numbers in the same place, and to discover such extensive tracks”Emma Nicholls, a paleontologist specializing in vertebrates at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oxford, told AFP.

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. “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.

The largest predator of the Jurassic

Scientists do not know exactly what made it possible to preserve these traces left in the mud, “but it could be that a storm deposited sediment on the prints, which allowed them to freeze”said Richard Butler, paleobiologist at the University of Birmingham. 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.