Stomping 50ft ‘Mongolian giant’ created ‘biggest two-legged dinosaur footprints’ ever found – and it even dwarfed T-rex
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A GIANT two-legged dinosaur that dwarfed the T-rex stomped through the Gobi Desert over 65 million years ago. The proof? Its enormous footprints, the biggest of which measure three feet across. Scientists say the footprints are the largest ever found belonging to a "bipedal" dinosaur – once that used two legs to walk.
![[Paleontologists excavating large dinosaur footprints.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/stomping-50ft-mongolian-giant-created-965790333.jpg?strip=all&w=775)
The supersized dino in question is Saurolophus, described by researchers as a "Mongolian giant". It would've reached around 50 feet in length – outsizing the fearsome 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex. Now scientists are hoping that the creature's massive remains might be found nearby.
![[Illustration of a Saurolophus dinosaur by a body of water, with mountains and trees in the background.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/saurolophus-dinosaur-walking-beautiful-landscape-965799172.jpg?strip=all&w=683)
The prehistoric stompings were found among a large collection of fossilised footprints located in the western Gobi Desert. It included a "continuous sequence of 13 fossilised footprints" that spanned nearly 80 feet, identified by a team from Japan's Okayama University of Science.
![[A man crouching beside a large dinosaur footprint fossil.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/stomping-50ft-mongolian-giant-created-965790335.jpg?strip=all&w=705)
"The identification of 14 trackways, including one found before 2018, enables the analysis of posture, walking style, speed, and group behaviour," said Dr Shiobu Ishigaki, who led the team. He added that that the discovery revealed "details that cannot be inferred from skeletal fossils".
![[Illustration of dinosaur footprints found in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/JW_22_01_DINO_FOOTSTEPS_MAP_68ba77.png?strip=all&w=909)
"Our next goal is to uncover the full skeleton of the large Saurolophus responsible for these footprints," said Dr Ishigaki, the director of the OUS Museum of Dinosaur Research. The Saurolophus lived between 72.1 and 66 million years ago. It belongs to a type of dinosaur known as the hadrosaurids, which were bulky duck-billed herbivores.
![[Illustration of a large dinosaur walking and leaving footprints.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/stomping-50ft-mongolian-giant-created-965790334.jpg?strip=all&w=739)
