Over 60 Early Jurassic dinosaur footprints discovered on a rock that's been at an Australian school for two decades
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
A remarkable Early Jurassic record has been hiding in plain sight for 20 years on a slab of rock displayed at a high school in Biloela, Australia, according to a new study.
While researchers knew the 1.5-meter-long (about 5-foot-long) slab was around 200 million years old and home to an abundance of visible dinosaur footprints, the significance of the fossil remained unclear.
Now, a team of paleontologists studying the rock's surface has found 66 fossilized footprints from 47 individual dinosaurs belonging to the ichnospecies Anomoepus scambu. Ichnospecies are organisms identified only through trace fossils, or fossils that are of impressions they leave, such as footprints, rather than the actual organisms.
The discovery represents one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur footprints per square meter ever documented in the country, and it provides an 'unprecedented snapshot' of the abundance of dinosaurs during the Early Jurassic, a period during which no dinosaur bones have been uncovered in Australia, according to a news release from The University of Queensland. The findings were published in the journal Historical Biology on March 10.
The fact that this fossil slipped under the radar for decades isn't surprising, said lead study author Dr. Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist and research associate with the university's Dinosaur Lab.
'Fossil dinosaur footprints tend to be vastly under-rated even by many (paleontologists),' Romilio said in an email.
But in Australia, since the oldest fossilized dinosaur bones come from the Middle Jurassic, about 160 million years ago, 'footprint fossils are the only direct evidence our country has of the types of dinosaurs we had here (during earlier times),' Romilio said. What's more, the slab provides a rare glimpse into the behavior and activity of a dinosaur that has only been described by its footprints found in various parts of the world, experts say.
By using advanced 3D imaging and light filters, Romilio was able to uncover hidden details in the stone slab, revealing the multitude of footprints and other features such as the direction in which the animals that made the tracks were headed.
The 66 fossilized footprints, which range in size from about 5 centimeters to 20 centimeters (about 2 to 8 inches) in length, reveal that the dinosaurs had likely been crossing a river or going up and down the length of a river, Romilio said. Since there are no ripple marks on the surface of the rock, it is difficult to tell the river flow's direction, but the tracks clearly show the dinosaurs walking in two directions, he added.
Through his analysis, Romilio found a total of 13 sequences of footprints that belonged to 13 dinosaurs that made the trackways. The remaining footprints, coming to a total of 34, were classified as isolated footprints, accounting for the 47 total individuals. The dinosaurs that made the tracks would have had legs ranging from 15 to 50 centimeters (about 6 to 20 inches) in length along with a chunky body and short arms, Romilio said.
Although trace fossils are often overlooked because they are more common than dinosaur bones, they can 'provide a huge amount of information when they're properly analyzed,' said Dr. Paul Olsen, a paleontologist and Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Olsen, who has studied Anomoepus, was not involved with this new study.
'(Footprints) provide information about animals that were present even though we don't have the bones … They're really like a parallel dataset that allows us to track, pun intended, what's going on when the bones are rare. That's why they're so important,' Olsen said.
From what is known about the other tracks that have been found across parts of the US, Europe, Africa and China, A. scambus was a three-toed, two-legged dinosaur that belonged to the ornithischian family, which includes other plant-eating dinosaurs such as duckbills and triceratops, and had beaks at the front of their mouths with grinding teeth, Olsen said.
These new footprints, which preserve a lot of anatomical detail, further support that 'small ornithischian dinosaurs achieved a global distribution by the beginning of the Jurassic Period,' he added.
The study authors also analyzed two other instances of trace fossils that were found in unexpected locations. They found that a 2,000-kilogram (about 4,400-pound) boulder used as a parking lot entry marker at the Callide mine near Biloela had two distinct footprints left by a slightly larger dinosaur. And a third rock from a personal collection (in use as a bookend) had a single footprint.
The rock slab located at the high school was also originally from the Callide Mine, which is an open-cut mine, meaning that the overlying rock is removed to get to the coal underneath, Romilio explained. During the extraction of the overlying rock, which spans many miles and dates to the Early Jurassic period, fossil footprints such as these can be found.
'There are definitely many more fossils occurring there,' Romilio said. 'Whether they are spotted in time, or whether it is safe to pick them up is another thing entirely. We are just lucky that these and some others have been spotted, recovered and available for people like me to study them and share the findings.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
A ‘dragon prince' dinosaur is redrawing the tyrannosaur family tree
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Scientists have identified a previously unknown 86 million-year-old dinosaur species that fills an early gap in the fossil record of tyrannosaurs, revealing how they evolved to become massive apex predators. Researchers analyzing the species' remains have named it Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which translates to 'dragon prince of Mongolia,' because it was small compared with its much larger relatives such as Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name means 'the tyrant lizard king.' The newly identified dinosaur was the closest known ancestor of tyrannosaurs and likely served as a transitional species from earlier tyrannosauroid species, according to the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Based on a reexamination of two partial skeletons uncovered in Mongolia's Gobi Desert in 1972 and 1973, the new study suggests that three big migrations between Asia and North America led tyrannosauroids to diversify and eventually reach a gargantuan size in the late Cretaceous Period before going extinct 66 million years ago. 'This discovery of Khankhuuluu forced us to look at the tyrannosaur family tree in a very different light,' said study coauthor Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor within the department of Earth, energy, and environment at the University of Calgary, in an email. 'Before this, there was a lot of confusion about who was related to who when it came to tyrannosaur species. What started as the discovery of a new species ended up with us rewriting the family history of tyrannosaurs.' Tyrannosaurs, known scientifically as Eutyrannosaurians, bring to mind hulking dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus, which weighed multiple metric tons and could take down equally large prey. With short arms and massive heads, they walked on two legs and boasted sharp teeth, Zelenitsky said. But tyrannosaurs didn't start out that way. They evolved from smaller dinosaurs before dominating the landscapes of North America and Asia between 85 million and 66 million years ago, the researchers said. While Tarbosaurus, an ancestor of T. rex, clocked in at between 3,000 and 6,000 kilograms (6,613 pounds and 13,227 pounds), the fleet-footed Khankhuuluu mongoliensis likely weighed only around 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds), spanned just 2 meters (6.5 feet) at the hips and 4 meters (13 feet) in length, according to the study authors. Comparing the two dinosaurs would be like putting a horse next to an elephant —Khankhuuluu would have reached T. rex's thigh in height, Zelenitsky said. 'Khankhuuluu was almost a tyrannosaur, but not quite,' Zelenitsky said. 'The snout bone was hollow rather than solid, and the bones around the eye didn't have all the horns and bumps seen in T. rex or other tyrannosaurs.' Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, or a closely related ancestor species, likely migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia that connected the continents 85 million years ago, Zelenitsky said. Because of this migrant species, we now know that tyrannosaurs actually evolved first on the North American continent and remained there exclusively over the next several million years, she said. 'As the many tyrannosaur species evolved on the continent, they became larger and larger.' Due to the poor fossil record, it's unclear what transpired in Asia between 80 million to 85 million years ago, she added. While some Khankhuuluu may have remained in Asia, they were likely replaced later on by larger tyrannosaurs 79 million years ago. Meanwhile, another tyrannosaur species crossed the land bridge back to Asia 78 million years ago, resulting in the evolution of two related but very different subgroups of tyrannosaurs, Zelenitsky said. One was a gigantic, deep-snouted species, while the other known as Alioramins was slender and small. These smaller dinosaurs have been dubbed 'Pinocchio rexes' for their long, shallow snouts. Both types of tyrannosaurs were able to live in Asia and not compete with each other because the larger dinosaurs were top predators, while Alioramins were mid-level predators going after smaller prey — think cheetahs or jackals in African ecosystems today, Zelenitsky said. 'Because of their small size, Alioramins were long thought to be primitive tyrannosaurs, but we novelly show Alioramins uniquely evolved smallness as they had 'miniaturized' their bodies within a part of the tyrannosaur family tree that were all otherwise giants,' Zelenitsky said. One more migration happened as tyrannosaurs continued to evolve, and a gigantic tyrannosaur species crossed back into North America 68 million years ago, resulting in Tyrannosaurus rex, Zelenitsky said. 'The success and diversity of tyrannosaurs is thanks to a few migrations between the two continents, starting with Khankhuuluu,' she said. 'Tyrannosaurs were in the right place at the right time. They were able to take advantage of moving between continents, likely encountering open niche spaces, and quickly evolving to become large, efficient killing machines.' The new findings support previous research suggesting that Tyrannosaurus rex's direct ancestor originated in Asia and migrated to North America via a land bridge and underscore the importance of Asia in the evolutionary success of the tyrannosaur family, said Cassius Morrison, a doctoral student of paleontology at University College London. Morrison was not involved in the new research. 'The new species provides essential data and information in part of the family tree with few species, helping us to understand the evolutionary transition of tyrannosaurs from small/ medium predators to large apex predators,' Morrison wrote in an email. The study also shows that the Alioramini group, once considered distant relatives, were very close cousins of T. rex. What makes the fossils of the new species so crucial is their age — 20 million years older than T. rex, said Steve Brusatte, professor and personal chair of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. Brusatte was not involved in the new study. 'There are so few fossils from this time, and that is why these scientists describe it as 'murky,'' Brusatte said. 'It has been a frustrating gap in the record, like if you suspected something really important happened in your family history at a certain time, like a marriage that started a new branch of the family or immigration to a new country, but you had no records to document it. The tyrannosaur family tree was shaped by migration, just like so many of our human families.' With only fragments of fossils available, it's been difficult to understand the variation of tyrannosaurs as they evolved, said Thomas Carr, associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin and director of the Carthage Institute of Paleontology. Carr was not involved in the new research. But the new study sheds light on the dinosaurs' diversity and clarifies which ones existed when — and how they overlapped with one another, he said. More samples from the fossil record will provide additional clarity, but the new work illustrates the importance of reexamining fossils collected earlier. 'We know so much more about tyrannosaurs now,' Carr said. 'A lot of these historical specimens are definitely worth their weight in gold for a second look.' When the fossils were collected half a century ago, they were only briefly described at the time, Brusatte said. 'So many of us in the paleontology community knew that these Mongolian fossils were lurking in museum drawers, waiting to be studied properly, and apt to tell their own important part of the tyrannosaur story,' he said. 'It's almost like there was a non-disclosure agreement surrounding these fossils, and it's now expired, and they can come out and tell their story.'
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Hear from UFO believers who hope Trump will finally prove them right
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan travels to "Contact in the Desert," the self-proclaimed largest UFO and UAP conference in the world. UFO enthusiasts and experts meet annually here to discuss everything from telepathy to recent sightings.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
What a Spiral in the Oort Cloud Could Mean for Life on Earth
A routine planetarium show at New York's Hayden Planetarium just triggered a potentially historic discovery in astrophysics. While curating scenes for 'Encounters in the Milky Way,' a team of scientists and animators stumbled across something surprising: a spiral structure hidden within the data modeling the Oort Cloud, which is one of the most mysterious regions in our solar system. The Oort Cloud, theorized to be a spherical shell of icy objects orbiting far beyond Neptune, has long remained unseen. Yet when astrophysicist Jackie Faherty noticed the unexpected shape during a simulation, she called in Oort Cloud expert David Nesvorny to investigate, according to a CNN report. It wasn't an animation glitch. It was real data. Nesvorny, who had generated the simulation, admitted he'd never viewed his data in three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates. When he did, the spiral structure emerged clearly. 'Weird way to discover things,' he said. 'I should know my data better.' This accidental find prompted Nesvorny to run weeks of simulations on NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer. Every model confirmed it: a spiral, caused not by the sun's gravity alone, but by the galactic tide—the pull of the Milky Way's own gravitational field acting on the outermost parts of our solar system. Ultimately, he published the findings in The Astrophysics Journal. The discovery reshapes long-held assumptions. While the outer Oort Cloud might still be spherical, the inner part appears to twist in a spiral pattern, suggesting our solar system is more dynamically connected to the galaxy than once thought. Still, verifying the spiral won't be easy. The icy bodies in the Oort Cloud are too small and distant to observe directly. Even with the powerful new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists expect to find only a handful—far short of the numbers needed to fully confirm the structure. But as Faherty put it, the dome of a planetarium can now double as a tool of discovery. 'This is science that hasn't had time to reach your textbook yet,' she said. What a Spiral in the Oort Cloud Could Mean for Life on Earth first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 11, 2025
