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Researchers excavating the dinosaur footprints at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire.
Credit: University of Birmingham
A worker at an English quarry has stumbled upon the United Kingdom’s largest dinosaur track site yet. The site, which consists of approximately 200 footprints from two different dinosaur species, is nearly 500 feet long and has attracted attention from archaeologists at England’s most prestigious universities.
Gary Johnson, who works at stone aggregate supplier Smiths Bletchington, spotted the tracks in June at a limestone quarry in Oxfordshire. Johnson had been stripping clay with a specialized vehicle when he felt a series of “unusual bumps” that sat roughly 3 meters (9.8 feet) away from each other. The bumps’ even spread led Johnson to alert leadership, who then got in contact with archaeologists at the University of Oxford and the University of Birmingham.
More than 100 scientists, students, and volunteers participated in the resulting excavation, according to the BBC. Their findings would quickly become one of the UK’s paleontological crown jewels. Stamped into a 150-meter (492-foot) stretch of limestone were dozens of dinosaur footprints formed roughly 166 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic Period. The site has since been dubbed the UK’s largest collection of dinosaur trackways.
Throughout the excavation, researchers leveraged aerial drone photography to build detailed 3D models of each footprint. These models, as well as the 20,000 aerial images used to create them, have helped paleontologists identify the prints as belonging to Cetiosaurus (a long-necked herbivore related to the well-known Diplodocus) and Megalosaurus (a carnivore with large, three-toed feet). Although most of these species’ trackways appear separate, one part of the site shows their paths intersecting. Though further research will be necessary to determine whether Cetiosaurus and Megalosaurus interacted, one area—which contains a Cetiosaurus print slightly squashed by a Megalosaurus print—suggests their journeys simply led them through the region at different times.
Scientists are reportedly working with Smiths Bletchington and Natural England, the country’s preservation department, to determine the track site’s future. Meanwhile, University of Birmingham paleontologist Richard Butler says the 3D models created during the excavation will serve researchers “for generations to come.”
This isn’t the first time Smiths Bletchington has been involved in a major archaeological find. In 1997, a series of Megalosaurus tracks were uncovered at the company’s Ardley Quarry just north of Oxford. A few years later, workers found remnants of a Roman settlement covering more than 27 hectares (67 acres) of Smiths Bletchington’s sand and gravel quarry in Ducklington.