Quarry workers in England have discovered the footprints of a 30-foot-tall clawed predator and submerged tracks of other dinosaurs, in what palaeontologists are calling one of the most significant discoveries in Britain in nearly three decades.
A trail of five different footprints was discovered last summer in a quarry in Oxfordshire, about 60 miles northwest of London, scientists announced to the public this week. The footprints belong to both herbivores and carnivores that roamed the area during the Middle Jurassic period, about 166 million years ago.
Instead of the grasslands that cover the area today, Jurassic Oxfordshire was more like the Florida Keys, wet with lagoons and mudflats – prime territory for dinosaur feet to sink into the ground.
The area, which was first excavated in 1997, has already become known as the “dinosaur highway” among paleontologists. Scientists found more than 40 sets of footprints on almost 200 meters of tracks. The new clues make it one of the largest dinosaur discovery sites in the world, said Emma Nicholls, vertebrate paleontologist and collection manager at the Natural History Museum, University of Oxford.
“These recent discoveries prove that there is still new evidence of these animals waiting to be found,” Ms Nicholls said.
At first, quarry workers didn’t think much of the abnormality they found while clearing clay in late 2023. The first dinosaur track was just a hump in the ground, said Mark Stanway, who manages the quarry.
“It probably wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds,” he said.
The hump patterns, each about 10 feet apart, turned out to be the last remains of giants that died tens of millions of years ago.
Paleontologists from the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford first visited the site in November 2023, finding footprints with three clawed toes in a shape associated in popular culture with dinosaurs.
“It’s like a caricature of a dinosaur,” said Dr. Nicholls.
These tracks were made by a megalosaurus, a ferocious predator that stood approximately 30 feet tall, weighed one and a half tons, and walked on its hind legs. Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur ever to be scientifically named and described in Oxford in 1824.
“We dug up new megalosaurus tracks in 2024, which is of course the 200th anniversary,” said Dr. Nicholls. “Totally random, but really creepy.”
The other four footprints belonged to one species, probably a sauropod herbivore, a the dinosaur family known for their long necks and tails, small heads, and thick columns instead of legs—traits that made them the largest land animals ever.
The footprints were more than three feet long and five feet deep, about the size of a baby bath, said Kirsty Edgar, professor of micropaleontology at the University of Birmingham.
The researchers said they couldn’t say exactly what type of sauropod made the print, but they believed it was a cetosaurus, a dinosaur about 60 feet long and weighing roughly two tons, because of previous fossil finds in the area.
The tracks also give scientists insight into how the animals behaved, especially where the tracks of different species connect, the scientists said.
For most of the track, the sauropods appear to be walking in a uniform space towards the north. But then, suddenly, one of the animal’s left legs lands too close to the previous one, suggesting that it stopped and perhaps looked over its shoulder.
Although scientists cannot determine exactly when the prints were made, the prints point to the moment of interaction.
“It’s very possible that Cetiosaurus was actually stopping to look back at Megalosaurus,” said Dr. Nicholls.
Sauropod footprint sets also vary in size, indicating that the animals may have moved in herds with young or traveled with smaller herbivores. Megalosaurus, the biggest predator at that time, moved alone.
“The fossil body is the death of the animal,” said Dr. Edgar, “while we get a sort of snapshot of what these many animals did in their lives.”
In addition to its marshy features, Jurassic Oxfordshire was also affected by higher sea levels.
Inside the prints, scientists found evidence of marine life, specifically brachiopods, snails, bivalves and echinoids, shelled invertebrates that today resemble molluscs and sea urchins, said Dr. Nicholls.
In the nearly 30 years since the tracks were first discovered in the area, technology has advanced rapidly, allowing scientists to more successfully document their findings.
During seven days last summer when teams of scientists worked at the site, they took hundreds of pictures, made molds, took drone footage of the site and created three-dimensional models, allowing for continued study of prints that may now be lost. .
Work at the quarry continued unchanged, Mr Stanway said, adding that he would not be surprised to find more clues in the coming years.
