Dinosaur Footprints Found in England by Quarry Workers

Quarry workers in England have discovered the clawed footprints of a 30-foot-tall predator and the sunken tracks of other dinosaurs, in what paleontologists are calling one of the most significant finds in Britain in nearly three decades.

A trail of five distinct prints were uncovered last summer in a quarry in Oxfordshire, about 60 miles northwest of London, scientists announced to the public this week. The prints belong to both herbivores and carnivores that roamed the area during the Middle Jurassic period, around 166 million years ago.

Rather than the grasslands that blanket the area today, Jurassic Oxfordshire more resembled the Florida Keys, humid with lagoons and muddy swamps — prime territory for dinosaur feet to sink into the ground.

The area, first excavated in 1997, had already become known among paleontologists as the “dinosaur highway.” Scientists have found more than 40 sets of footprints across nearly 200 yards of pathways. The new tracks expand it into one of the largest sites of dinosaur discoveries in the world, said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist and collections manager at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

“These recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found,” Ms. Nicholls said.

At first, the quarry workers did not think much of the abnormality they found while clearing clay in late 2023. The first trace of a dinosaur was just a hump in the ground, said Mark Stanway, who manages the quarry.

“It was probably not as dramatic as it sounds,” he said.

The pattern of humps, each about 10 feet apart, turned out to be the last vestiges of giants who died tens of millions of years ago.

Paleontologists from the University of Birmingham and Oxford first visited the site in November 2023, finding clawed, three-toed footprints in a shape that has become associated with dinosaurs in popular culture.

“It’s like a caricature of a dinosaur,” Dr. Nicholls said.

Those tracks were made by a megalosaurus, a ferocious predator that stood roughly 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 at Oxford, in 1824.

“We were excavating new trackways of megalosaurus in 2024, which of course is the 200th anniversary,” Dr. Nicholls said. “Completely coincidental but really spine-tingling.”

The other four prints belonged to one species, likely a herbivorous sauropod, a family of dinosaurs known for their long necks and tails, small heads and thick pillars for legs — features that made them the largest land animals ever.

The footprints were more than three feet long and one and a half feet deep, about the size of a baby’s bathtub, said Kirsty Edgar, a professor of micropaleontology at the University of Birmingham.

The researchers said they could not tell precisely what species of sauropod made the print but that they believed it was a cetiosaurus, a dinosaur some 60 feet long and weighing roughly two tons, because of previous fossil finds in the area.

The tracks also give scientists some insight into how the animals behaved, particularly at the point where the different species’ paths interact, the scientists said.

For much of the path, the sauropods seem to be walking at a steady space heading north. But then, suddenly, one of the animal’s left feet lands too close to the previous one, suggesting that it stopped and possibly looked over its shoulder.

Though the scientists cannot determine exactly when the prints were made, the prints hint at a moment of interaction.

“It’s very possible that the cetiosaurus is actually stopping to look back at the megalosaurus,” Dr. Nicholls said.

The sets of sauropod footprints are also different sizes, showing that the animals might have moved in a herd with juveniles or traveled alongside smaller herbivores. The megalosaurus, the apex predator at the time, moved alone.

“A body fossil is the death of the animal,” Dr. Edgar said, “whereas we’re getting a kind of snapshot of what these multiple animals were doing in life.”

In addition to its swampy features, Jurassic Oxfordshire was also affected by higher sea levels.

Inside the prints, scientists found evidence of marine life, namely brachiopods, gastropods, bivalves and echinoids, shelled invertebrates that resemble mollusks and sea urchins today, said Dr. Nicholls.

In the nearly 30 years since tracks were first discovered in the area, technology has rapidly progressed, allowing scientists to more successfully record their findings.

During the seven days last summer when the teams of scientists worked on site, they took hundreds of pictures, created molds, recorded drone footage of the site and created three-dimensional models, allowing ongoing study of prints that may now be lost to the elements.

Work at the quarry went on unaffected, Mr. Stanway said, adding that he would not be surprised to find even more tracks in the coming years.