Anthony Romilio examines the slab at Biloela State High School in Queensland, Australia
University of Queensland
A slab of 200-million-year-old rock that has been on display for 20 years at a school in Queensland, Australia, contains 66 footprints from 47 individual dinosaurs.
The rock was gifted to Biloela State High School by the nearby Callide mine, where it was found by coal miners. Although it was recognised as containing numerous dinosaur footprints, no one realised its true significance until a team led by Anthony Romilio at the University of Queensland visited the school.
“I could see there were a lot of dinosaur footprints,” says Romilio. “I knew it was a highly significant discovery.”
The slab is so heavy that it took several strong people to lift it into a position where it could be studied. Romilio also had to remove chewing gum that had been stuck onto it by school students.
But it wasn’t until he had cast a 3D silicon model, taken photographs and processed them that the full extent of the find was revealed.
“As a palaeontologist, I knew I had found a very important specimen,” says Romilio.
Because no fossil bones were associated with the footprints and no dinosaur skeletons from the Early Jurassic Epoch have ever been found in Australia, it is impossible to know exactly which species left the tracks. However, the researchers have assigned them to Anomoepus scambus, an ichnospecies – a species only known from trace fossils of things like footprints, nests and faeces – first found in the US.
Footprints on the rock are thought to have been made by small, plant-eating dinosaurs
University of Queensland
Based on the size of the three-toed footprints, the researchers estimate that the dinosaurs would have had hip heights of between 20 and 76 centimetres and were walking at between 2 and 6 kilometres per hour.
“They’re all small animals that made the footprints,” says Romilio. “They all seem to be the same type of two-legged plant-eating dinosaur.”
When the dinosaurs walked across the site, the ground would have been a silty surface under a shallow layer of water. Alongside the dinosaur prints, there are holes in the slab that were probably made by burrowing invertebrates.
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