Recent days have been an exciting time for palaeontologists and dinosaur enthusiasts alike, with the rare discovery of the largest dinosaur trackway in Europe, located in the UK. Uncovered by the experts from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) and the University of Birmingham, the location provided further insight into the Jurassic Period, which was 171 to 165 million years ago.
The rare discovery of the largest dinosaur trackway in Europe
The rare dinosaur trackway is located at Dewars Farm Quarry, near Bicester in Oxfordshire, with a jaw-dropping 220-metre stretch immortalised by time, showing us a glimpse of a small moment in time. The discovery boasts almost 100 sauropod footprints providing clarity on how the herbivorous four-legged dinosaurs moved around.
The footprints have been determined to be left by Cetiosaurus, which grew up to 16 meters long and lived during the Jurassic period in what is now France and Britain. The species were not fast compared to their size, moving in a similar fashion to elephants, around four to five miles per hour – the same speed as human speed walking.
Overall, hundreds of various footprints have been discovered in the site, including some fossils. The smaller three-pointed footprints are believed to be of carnivorous megalosaurs.
Dr Duncan Murdock, from Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, told The Independent: “We’ve been working at this site since 2022 and slowly uncovering more and more of this surface. This summer we excavated four trackways, the longest of which is 220 metres, with nearly 100 individual footprints, each of which is nearly a metre long itself – so absolutely huge.”
“With that we can work out how big this animal was. Roughly speaking, the height of a hip is about four times the print, so about four metres to the hip, which works out to about 15 or 16 metres long from head to tail, and [weighing] up to 10 tonnes.”
University of Birmingham palaeontologist Kirsty Edgar said: “We’re uncovering something that people have never seen before. It’s so rare to find something this big.”
“We were delighted to be welcomed back to Dewars Farm quarry earlier this year, to continue excavating and discover more dinosaur tracks. This site in Oxfordshire is the largest dinosaur track site in the UK, and arguably now the largest mapped dinosaur track site in the world when we consider finds dating back to the 1990s on the same surface nearby.”
Richard Butler, Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham and one of the excavation leads, said: “Most of what we know about dinosaurs comes from their skeletons, but footprints and the sediments that they are in can provide valuable additional information about how these organisms lived and what their environment looked like over 166 million years ago.”
A site of this magnitude is a big deal for the UK, uncovering not only dinosaurs, but also smaller ancient sea creatures, such as sea urchins, seashells, like bivalves and brachiopods, and little squid-like creatures like belemnites, giving us insight into the seascape long forgotten, that once formed the Earth.
As the excavations are ongoing, it is expected that more discoveries of the largest dinosaur trackway in Europe, and the UK, will be made, so watch this space!