Tracks Reveal "Dinosaur Highway" Story

It was another ordinary day.  A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a "dinosaur highway" and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers recently said.  The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarrry in Oxfordshire in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area ad offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said.  "These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited," said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham.  Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked , herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 60 feet in length.  A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious 9-meter predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago.  An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores.  "Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of the animals out there, waiting to be found," said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.  Nearly 30 years ago, 40 sets of footprints discovered in a lime-stone quarry in the area were considered one of the world's most inaccessible now, and there's limited photographic evidence because it predated the 9hse of digital cameras and drones to record the findings.  The group that worked at the site this summer took more than 20,000 digital images and used drones to create 3D models of the prints.  The trove of documentation will aid future studies and could shed light on the size of the dinosaurs, how they  walked and the speed at which they moved.  "The preservation is co detailed that we an see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur's feet squelched in and out," said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum.  "Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants, we an bring toile the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through."  The findings will be shown at a new exhibit at the museum and also broadcast on BBC's "Digging for Britain program in the future.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History and
the University of Birmingham works find the "dinosaur
highway at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshsire, Eng.