When a miner in Oxfordshire, England came across unusual bumps beneath the mine’s clay surface, he probably never dreamed that he would one day wake up with dinosaur footprints.
The strange bumps he saw were actually the footprints of some of the biggest dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, including Megalosaurus. This new discovery is known as one of the most important sets of dinosaur footprints ever discovered.
Christie Edgar, a paleontologist at the University of Birmingham, believes that this rare discovery provides a unique picture of the ancient world. In addition, sea shells and sea urchins were also found at the site, which according to the researchers shows that the dinosaurs probably moved on the edge of a lagoon.
Dr. Duncan Murdoch of the Natural History Museum in London explains in a statement:
The footprints are amazingly well preserved. You can even see how the mud changed shape when the dinosaurs stepped in and out. Discovering these artifacts, along with fossils such as shells, plants, and excavated tunnels, will help us create a vivid picture of the muddy wetland environment and how dinosaurs walked in this environment.
According to the researches, four tracks from the huge collection discovered belong to a species of huge herbivorous dinosaurs called sauropods. One of them was probably a stetosaurus, which reached 18 meters in length. But the fifth track belongs to Megalosaurus, a carnivorous dinosaur that was 9 meters long. Megalosaurus was the first species to be scientifically named in 1824, and now this discovery has occurred exactly 200 years after its naming.
The longest track in the Dinosaur Highway series is over 150 meters long and together with the other tracks form the largest collection of dinosaur tracks in the UK. This amazing discovery happened in the Devers Farm mine and added another surprise to the valuable collection of footprints in this area, which was also the site of the discovery of 40 other tracks in 1997.
Today, the advancement of technology has allowed researchers to examine such works with unprecedented precision. Using drones and aerial photography, they have made very accurate 3D models of the discovered footprints and documented the details of the discovery. Making digital models helps researchers to get more information about how dinosaurs move and behave.
As an example, researchers’ studies show that each step of the huge Megalosaurus was about 2.7 meters long. The distance between the footprints also indicates that the dinosaur moved at a speed similar to that of today’s humans, that is, about 3 kilometers per hour. Sauropods also moved at the same speed, and what’s more interesting is that their path intersects at a point with the path of Megalosaurus. This intersection raises interesting questions about the possibility of encounter or interaction between these species.
Details of the new discovery are scheduled to be revealed on January 8 in a documentary entitled “Dig for Britain”. The footprints are also on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
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