In 2024, researchers from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham excavated a huge expanse of a quarry floor in Oxfordshire filled with hundreds of dinosaur footprints.
Dating to the Middle Jurassic period (around 166 million years ago), the extensive trackways are part of what has been described as a huge “dinosaur highway”. They form the largest dinosaur tracksite in the UK today. It’s among the largest in the world.
The tracks were made as dinosaurs walked across mudflats surrounded by warm tropical lagoons. As the feet of the giant animals, some up to 10 tonnes, pressed on the mud, they left behind both an impression of the foot and in some cases a large rim of displaced mud around the track.
