• Health
  • Science
  • U.S.
  • Technology
  • Business
  • World
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Sports

Building a Better World

News and information

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Our Team

Scientists shocked by huge dinosaur discovery in Australia

March 30, 2017 By Dan Taylor

Scientists shocked by huge dinosaur discovery in Australia

Researchers have just made massive discovery on the western coast of Australia. Photo via the University of Queensland.

Scientists have just made a huge discovery in Australia, literally. They have found dinosaur footprints that are the size of the refrigerator, and would be the biggest ever found, according to a statement from the University of Queensland.

The footprints were discovered among other dino footprints along the western coast of Australia, one of the best places in the world to find them. The 15-mile stretch is often called “Australia’s Jurassic Park,” although the prints are usually between 140 and 127 million years old and are therefore from the Cretaceous period.

Several of the footprints were 5.5 feet long, which would be the largest ever found. They probably belong to one of the very large long-necked long-tailed herbivore dinosaurs.

The full statement from the university follows below.

An unprecedented 21 different types of dinosaur tracks have been identified on a 25-kilometre stretch of the Dampier Peninsula coastline dubbed “Australia’s Jurassic Park”.

A team of palaeontologists from The University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences and James Cook University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences braved sharks, crocodiles, massive tides and the threat of development to unveil the most diverse assemblage of dinosaur tracks in the world in 127 to 140 million-year-old rocks in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Lead author Dr Steve Salisbury said the diversity of the tracks around Walmadany (James Price Point) was globally unparalleled and made the area the “Cretaceous equivalent of the Serengeti”.

“It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia’s dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period,” Dr Salisbury said.

“It’s such a magical place—Australia’s own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting.”

In 2008, the Western Australian Government selected Walmadany as the preferred site for a $40 billion liquid natural gas processing precinct.

The area’s Traditional Custodians, the Goolarabooloo people, contacted Dr Salisbury and his team, who dedicated more than 400 hours to investigating and documenting the dinosaur tracks.

“We needed the world to see what was at stake,” Goolarabooloo Law Boss Phillip Roe said.

The dinosaur tracks form part of a song cycle that extends along the coast and then inland for 450 km, tracing the journey of a Dreamtime creator being called Marala, the Emu man.

“Marala was the Lawgiver. He gave country the rules we need to follow. How to behave, to keep things in balance,” Mr Roe said said.

“It’s great to work with UQ researchers. We learnt a lot from them and they learnt a lot from us.”

Dr Salisbury said the surrounding political issues made the project “particularly intense”, and he was relieved when National Heritage listing was granted to the area in 2011 and the gas project collapsed in 2013.

“There are thousands of tracks around Walmadany. Of these, 150 can confidently be assigned to 21 specific track types, representing four main groups of dinosaurs, ” Dr Salisbury said.

“There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods, and six types of tracks from armoured dinosaurs.

“Among the tracks is the only confirmed evidence for stegosaurs in Australia. There are also some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever recorded. Some of the sauropod tracks are around 1.7 m long.”

“Most of Australia’s dinosaur fossils come from the eastern side of the continent, and are between 115 and 90 million years old.  The tracks in Broome are considerably older,”

The research has been published as the 2016 Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Additional images and video for media use can be found here and here, respectively. For further information contact Jan King.

Still images are available for use under a Creative Commons No Derivatives licence, meaning they can be used with attribution and without adaptation or change. The videos are available under a less-restricted Creative Commons licence to ensure they can be cut and mixed for media purposes. Attribution is still required. Please feel free to contact our media department on communications@uq.edu.au if you require further information about these licences.

For more information on Kimberley dinosaur tracks: UQ Dinosaur Lab and Dinosaur Coast Management Group.

Sharing

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Filed Under: Front Page, Science, Top Story

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Us

Facebookrss

Search:

Recent Posts

  • NASA’s InSight spacecraft makes important course correction May 26, 2018
  • Scientists outraged at latest Trump decision May 15, 2018
  • Huge uproar erupts over major incident at Utah park May 13, 2018
  • Incredible moon discovery stuns scientists May 12, 2018
  • Authorities shocked by discovery about common painkiller May 6, 2018
  • Outrageous crocodile experiment stuns scientists May 5, 2018
  • Great Barrier Reef is too quiet, scientists say May 1, 2018
  • Massive Hiroshima bomb discovery shocks scientists May 1, 2018
  • Earth will be slammed by massive asteroid April 29, 2018
  • Teens are doing something incredibly alarming in schools April 29, 2018
  • Huge discovery in Tasmania stuns scientists April 28, 2018
  • Shocking discovery in New Jersey stuns authorities April 22, 2018
  • Huge volcanic explosion could wipe out the United States April 21, 2018
  • Huge controversy erupts over world’s hottest pepper April 15, 2018
  • SpaceX is about to do something astonishing April 15, 2018

Copyright © 2022 Jones Kilmartin Group, LLC · Metro Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress