About 200 dinosaur footprints, which are 166 million years old, were discovered in Oxfordshire, South-East England. This find represents the biggest site of its kind ever found in the UK, as declared by the universities of Oxford and Birmingham on Thursday.
Five dinosaur footprints will be featured on the BBC Two show “Digging for Britain” next Wednesday.
The footprints cover a distance of 150 meters at Dewars Farm Quarry, known as a highway for dinosaurs, where both herbivores and carnivores roamed during the Middle Jurassic period.
Dr. Emma Nicholls, a paleontologist specializing in vertebrates at the University of Oxford’s Natural History Museum, said it is unusual to discover numerous footprints concentrated in one location with extensive trails.
The scientist stated that this could be one of the biggest collections of dinosaur footprints globally.
The initial footprints were found in June by Gary Johnson, an employee operating an excavator at the quarry.
Johnson told the BBC that he was the first person to witness them, which felt unreal.
About 100 individuals took part in the excavations later on, under the supervision of Oxford and Birmingham universities, at a site that used to be a warm-watered ancient shallow lagoon.
Scientists are unsure about how these footprints, preserved in mud, were maintained in this state. Richard Butler, a paleobiologist at the University of Birmingham, suggests it may have been caused by a storm depositing sediments on them, which then helped freeze the footprints.
Four out of the five dinosaurs that made imprints at the location were likely cetiosaur species, which are herbivorous sauropods with long necks.
The marks, resembling those left by an elephant but significantly bigger, match creatures that reached lengths of up to 18 meters.
The fifth creature that left tracks was likely a megalosaur, the biggest carnivorous dinosaur in modern England, which walked on two legs and left distinct claw marks in the ground.