How a huge dinosaur trackway was uncovered in the UK

Scientist Peter Falkingham is walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs – literally.

The palaeobiologist from LJMU’s School of Biological and Environmental Sciences has been pacing a dinosaur ‘superhighway’ uncovered this summer in Oxfordshire – to learn about animals from 160m years ago.

One of the world’s leading experts in fossilised tracks, Professor Falkingham was invited to work with the palaeontology team from Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History which is uncovering the extraordinary site – one of the longest trackways found anywhere in the world.

The main prints, described as insanely big, were made by a sauropod dinosaur; probably Cetiosaurus, of up to 16m in length. Smaller prints have also been found at the site, made by a two-legged carnivorous dinosaur called Megalosaurus.

The tracks are an incredible resource for researchers and they provide very different information from fossils.

“We might have a skeleton, where we say the leg is this long, so its stride must be this long,” says Peter Falkingham from Liverpool John Moores University.

“But with a trackway like this, we've got hundreds of metres of the animal doing its own thing. And it's so important to look at the way animals move freely and naturally, and tracks are the only way we can do that for dinosaurs.”

The footprints can answer questions about how dinosaurs interacted - were they alone or in a herd, being chased, or simply ambling along?

Since the arrival of computer-generated dinosaurs in movies like Jurassic Park, the behaviour you see on screen is based largely on the discoveries made at this kind of site.

By analysing the footprints in his lab, Prof Falkingham has recreated a 3D-model of the sauropod dinosaur that made the lengthy track.

“It's not moving particularly fast, two metres per second,” he explains. “It's about the same speed as a human would walk quickly - in this case it’s a stroll.”

Peter appeared on BBC Breakfast, ITV Granada and BBC 5 Live to discuss the findings.

l Professor Falkingham leads a major research study at LJMU is seeking to establish exactly how dinosaurs walked and how that changed as they evolved into modern-day birds. The study - ‘Mud to muscles’ – is a £2.1m Horizon Europe project.