Anthony Romilio examines the slab at Biloela State High School
University of Queensland
A slab of 200-million-year-old rock that has been on display for 20 years at a school in Queensland, Australia, has been discovered to contain 66 footprints from 47 individual dinosaurs.
The rock was gifted to Biloela State High School from the Callide Mine, where it was found by coal miners. Although it was recognised as containing numerous dinosaur footprints, no-one realised its true significance until a team led by Anthony Romilio at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia visited the school.
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“I could see there were a lot of dinosaur footprints,” says Romilio. “I knew it was a highly significant discovery.”
The slab was so heavy that it took several strong people to lift it into a position where it could be studied, and Romilio had to remove chewing gum that had been stuck onto the slab by school students.
But it wasn’t until he had cast a 3D silicon model, taken photographs and applied filters to remove the colours that the full extent of the find was revealed.
“As a palaeontologist I knew I had found a very important specimen,” says Romilio.
Because no fossil bones were associated with the footprints and no dinosaur skeletons from the Early Jurassic era have ever been found in Australia, it is impossible to know exactly which species left the tracks. However it has been assigned to Anomoepus scambus, a species only known from trace fossils – an ichnospecies – first found in the United States.
Footprints on the rock are thought to have been made by small, plant-eating dinosaurs
University of Queensland
Based on the size of the three-toed fossils, the researchers estimate that the dinosaurs would have had hip heights between 20 and 76 centimetres and were walking at between 2 and 6 kilometres per hour.
“They’re all small animals that made the footprints,” says Romilio. “They all seem to be the same type of two-legged plant-eating dinosaur.”
The ground would have been a silty surface under a shallow layer of water when the dinosaurs walked across the site. Alongside the dinosaur prints are holes in the slab that were most likely made by burrowing invertebrates.
Topics:
palaeontology/
dinosaurs