Around 200 dinosaur footprints discovered in a quarry in England

It is the UK's largest dinosaur footprint site ever revealed. Nearly 200 dinosaur footprints were discovered this summer in a quarry in Oxfordshire, in the south-east of England, the universities of Oxford and Birmingham announced on Thursday January 2.

These impressive footprints left 166 million years ago by five dinosaurs will be revealed in the archeology program “Digging for Britain” on January 8 on BBC 2. The longest of the tracks traced by the 'one of them extends 150 meters long in the Dewars Farm quarry, 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 trails”Emma Nicholls, a paleontologist specializing in vertebrates at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oxford, told Agence France-Presse. According to her, it could also be one of the largest footprint sites in the world.

“It was surreal”

The first of these were discovered in June by Gary Johnson, a worker who was working with an excavator in this quarry operated by the 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.

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. A fifth 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.