Britain's biggest-ever dinosaur highway with about 200 footprints discovered in Oxfordshire
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Hundreds of dinosaur footprints dating back 166 million years have been found in a quarry in Oxfordshire. Around 200 prints, the UK's biggest ever dinosaur highway, criss-cross a limestone floor discovered after a dig carried out at Dewars Farm Quarry teams from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham, uncovered five extensive trackways. They reveal the comings and goings of two different types of dinosaurs that are thought to be a long-necked sauropod called Cetiosaurus and the smaller meat-eating Megalosaurus. The longest trackways are 150m in length, but they could extend much further as only part of the quarry has been excavated.
"This is one of the most impressive track sites I've ever seen, in terms of scale, in terms of the size of the tracks," said Prof Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham.You can step back in time and get an idea of what it would have been like, these massive creatures just roaming around, going about their own business.".
One area of the site shows the carnivore and herbivore tracks crossing over, prompting questions about whether and how the two were interacting. Experts were called into the quarry when worker Gary Johnson felt "unusual bumps" as he was stripping clay back with a digger to expose the quarry floor. The Universities of Oxford and Birmingham co-led a team of more than 100 people on a week-long excavation in June 2024, uncovering around 200 footprints, creating 20,000 photographs and building detailed 3D models of the site using aerial drone photography.
