According to new research, at least five of them crossed an intersection in southern England some 166 million years ago, leaving behind 200 footprints that researchers have dubbed the “dinosaur highway.”
Scientists said the tracks in Oxfordshire, unearthed last summer after a quarry worker spotted unusual bumps on the ground, represent the most significant finding of dinosaur tracks in this country in decades and offer a glimpse into how two species interacted with their surroundings.
Video by University of Birmingham via TIME
“For something of this scale to have been preserved for so long, giving us a snapshot of what tropical Oxfordshire looked like 166 million years ago — when these animals were just going about their day — it’s pretty special,” said Kirsty Edgar, a professor of micropaleontology at the University of Birmingham in England who helped lead the excavation.
“It’s the closest we’ll get to a time machine,” she said in a phone interview Monday.
Experts from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham counted four sets of extensive tracks at the site left by sauropod dinosaurs, most likely four Cetiosaurus — long-necked herbivores — the biggest of which measured 60 feet in length. A fifth set of tracks was left, they believe, by a Megalosaurus, a 30-foot carnivorous theropod with distinctive three-toed claws that typically weighed over two British tonnes, equivalent to an SUV.
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