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Discovery in Oxfordshire revealed 200 footprints from 166 million years ago, including tracks of Cetiosaurus and Megalosaurus, at the largest footprint site in the UK.
According to the University of Oxford, the discovery began when Gary Johnson was operating a machine at Dewars Farm Quarry, a limestone quarry near Bicester, in Oxfordshire, and felt what he described as “strange hiccups” under the wheels. Upon stopping the equipment and observing the ground, he found what no one had seen for 166 million years: a sequence of dinosaur footprints preserved just beneath the clay.
From that moment, teams from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham coordinated an excavation with more than 100 scientists, students, and volunteers, who worked for an entire week at the site. The result was the identification of five extensive tracks with about 200 individual footprints, forming what has been described as the largest dinosaur footprint site ever discovered in the UK.
Dinosaur footprints in Oxfordshire revealed tracks of Cetiosaurus and Megalosaurus
According to the Natural History Museum, four of the five tracks were made by Cetiosaurus, a long-necked herbivorous sauropod that could reach about 18 meters in length. The fifth track was attributed to Megalosaurus, the largest known carnivorous predator of the British Jurassic, approximately 9 meters long and over 2 tons.
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The longest continuous track found at the site exceeded 150 meters. The footprints of the Megalosaurus were about 65 centimeters long, while the largest marks of the Cetiosaurus reached 90 centimeters, showing the size difference between the predator and the herbivore that crossed the same area.
Based on the size and spacing of the footprints, researchers estimated that both were walking at about 5 km/h, a speed similar to that of a human walking normally. This suggests that the animals were not running or chasing something at that moment, but were just moving with relative tranquility through the muddy terrain.
Gary Johnson saved a paleontological site that could have been destroyed in seconds
The episode gained extra importance because the discovery only survived thanks to the attention of Gary Johnson. If he had continued removing the clay layer with the machine, the footprints could have been destroyed before any researcher knew they were there.
It was this immediate interruption that allowed the arrival of specialists and the preservation of the site. The case became a rare and positive example of cooperation between industrial activity and science, showing that the commercial use of land does not always need to clash with the preservation of paleontological heritage.
The quarry operation itself collaborated with the entire excavation, allowing the site to be studied carefully. Instead of becoming just another extraction front, the area turned into one of the most important paleontological finds in the United Kingdom in recent years.
Megalosaurus has a historical connection with Oxfordshire since 1824
The discovery became even more symbolic because the Megalosaurus has a direct historical relationship with Oxfordshire. It was in this same county that the animal became, in 1824, the first dinosaur to be scientifically named in history, when the anatomist William Buckland described bones found in Stonesfield.
For almost 200 years, the Megalosaurus was known mainly from fragmented bone remains. The tracks at Dewars Farm Quarry change this picture because they show not only what the animal was like, but how it moved, what its stride was, and at what pace it traversed the Jurassic environment.
According to the University of Oxford, this type of evidence greatly enhances the scientific value of the discovery. Bones help reconstruct anatomy. Footprints help reconstruct behavior, movement, and use of space, offering a dimension that the bone record alone cannot deliver.
Tracks show predator and herbivores using the same area in the Middle Jurassic
One of the most important points of the discovery is the distribution of the five tracks in the same space. According to the Natural History Museum, the predominance of Cetiosaurus tracks over the solitary trail of Megalosaurus is consistent with expected ecological logic, as large predators tend to be less numerous than large herbivores.
More important than this is the fact that the footprints were preserved in the same layer of mud. This indicates that these animals used that area at times close enough to leave an almost frozen portrait of dinosaur movement in the British Middle Jurassic.
This detail helps researchers interpret the site not as an isolated point, but as part of a circulation corridor repeatedly used by large dinosaurs. Instead of a random scene, the quarry seems to record a living and active landscape from 166 million years ago.
New excavation revealed a sauropod trail 220 meters long and expanded the scale of the discovery
According to Oxford University, the first excavation did not conclude the story of Dewars Farm Quarry. In a second field season, researchers returned to the site and revealed an even larger trail, attributed to a sauropod, with 220 meters in length.
This sequence was described as the largest sauropod trail ever found in Europe and the second largest in the world. The new finding reinforced the idea that the area holds a much broader system of dinosaur movement than initially imagined during the excavations.
The documentation was carried out with manual excavation and also with drone aerial photogrammetry, generating high-resolution 3D models. This allows scientists to study the footprints with millimetric precision even without being physically present at the site, as well as ensuring extremely detailed digital preservation.
Dinosaur footprints reveal behaviors that bones can never show
Fossilized tracks have a special value in paleontology because they record something that skeletons cannot preserve. A bone shows shape, size, and body structure. A track shows behavior in life, including speed, posture, direction, and movement pattern.
In the case of Dewars Farm Quarry, researchers were able to calculate that both Megalosaurus and Cetiosaurus walked at about 5 km/h. They were also able to confirm that the sauropods moved with an upright posture, without dragging their tails on the ground, something important for the scientific reconstruction of these giants.
What Gary Johnson felt as “strange hiccups” under the machine’s wheels was, in practice, the surface of a much larger paleontological system, buried for millions of years just a few centimeters below the ground. The discovery did not just reveal footprints. It revealed an entire landscape of dinosaur circulation preserved in the Oxfordshire limestone, centimeters below the clay.
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