Last summer, a worker at a limestone quarry in southeast England was digging up clay when he noticed some strange bumps in the area.
Now, teams of over 100 researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford have determined that the bumps were dinosaur tracks dating back about 166 million years ago to the Middle Jurassic period.
Around 200 footprints were found along five different trails at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire. The newly discovered footprints provide more insight into the lives of the dinosaurs, revealing details about their speed, size, movement, and interactions.
“All of the dinosaurs, based on our estimates of speed, were probably walking rather than running,” said Kirsty Edgar, a professor of micropaleontology at the University of Birmingham.
According to Edgar, the environment that the dinosaurs inhabited was likely something that resembled the Florida Keys of today. Researchers unburied five trackways in the mud. The longest one was almost 500 feet in length.
Four of the trackways were made by long-necked herbivorous sauropods, most likely the 60-foot, two-ton Cetiosaurus.
The fifth set was made by a carnivorous Megalosaurus, a 30-foot-long predator with clawed three-toed feet. In 1824, the Megalosaurus became the first dinosaur to be scientifically named by Oxford geologist William Buckland.
One area of the site showed the carnivore and herbivore tracks crossing over, which raised questions about how and if the two species interacted.
“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 Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at Oxford Museum of Natural History.
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Each Megalosaurus track was about 25 inches long, with a stride of roughly 8.8 feet. The scientists estimate that the dinosaur walked at a speed of around three miles per hour, similar to the average walking speed of an adult human. The sauropods were thought to have walked at a similar pace.
Dinosaur tracks were first discovered in the area in 1997 when limestone quarry workers came across more than 40 sets of footprints. Some trackways reached almost 600 feet in length.
The British government named the Oxfordshire site as one of the world’s most important dinosaur track sites. It has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Overall, the recent discovery has provided evidence about the species of dinosaurs that lived in the U.K. during the Middle Jurassic period.
Due to modern technology, the prints can be recorded with much more detail than ever before, adding to the significance of the area.
During the latest excavation, more than 20,000 images of the 200 footprints were captured. They will serve as resources for further dinosaur study and education.