LONDON (AP) – A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers said on Thursday.
The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry, in Oxfordshire, in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area and offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said.
“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Micropaleontology Professor at the University of Birmingham Kirsty Edgar.
Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked, herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 18 metres in length. A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious nine-metre predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago.
An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores.
“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found,” said Vertebrate Paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History Emma Nicholls.
