A quarry in Oxfordshire has revealed the largest dinosaur trackway site ever discovered in the UK. Some 200 huge footprints were discovered, believed to have been made over 166 million years ago and to have been left by two different types of dinosaur: the long-necked sauropod, Cetiosaurus, and the smaller, meat-eating Megalosaurus. The longest of the tracks extends 150m, suggesting the possibility of further as yet undiscovered dinosaur pathways. The tracks were first identified by Gary Johnson, a worker at Dewars Farm Quarry.
The quarry, covered by a warm, shallow lagoon in prehistoric times, is thought to have preserved the tracks by covering them with sediments following a storm event. They have been studied in detail by over 100 scientists, students and volunteers, alongside working quarrymen. Casts of the tracks were made and over 20,000 photographs were taken to create 3D models.
While the four trackways made by the massive, four-legged sauropods resemble elephant footprints, only on an infinitely larger scale, the smaller track of the two-legged, carnivorous Megalosaurus is thought to be the most distinctive. The single, huge tridactyl imprint is described by Dr Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History as “almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprint”.
Suggestions for the site’s future include working with Smiths Bletchington, the company operating the quarry, and Natural England to preserve the trackways. Further, undiscovered, prehistoric tracks may also lie hidden at the site
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