One of the world’s biggest dinosaur tracks has been discovered in central west Queensland, in a stretch of land the size of two basketball courts and featuring intricate footprints from the world’s largest family of dinosaurs.
The gigantic dinosaur footprints preserved in a rock shelf at the bottom of a small outback creek bed have been saved from the floods that have ravaged western Queensland.
Hailed by palaeontologists as the best-preserved sauropod track in Australia, the small town of Winton hopes the discovery will help secure its future.
The well-preserved 95 million-year-old track, which is estimated to weigh 500 tonnes, is now being painstakingly transferred to an outback museum, where owners hope it will become a major international tourist attraction and bring the spotlight back to a region devastated by drought and flood.
A stretch of land the size of two basketball courts features detailed footprints from the world’s largest family of dinosaurs, titanosaur sauropods.
Palaeontologists believe the footprints were made by three different dinosaurs.
One was an ornithopod, a tiny insect-eater that scampered around on two legs; another was a slightly larger two-legged theropod that ate plants.
Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones said 20 of the tracks were made by a single sauropod dinosaur - a massive, lumbering, four-legged herbivore - considered to be the largest animal to live the earth.
Sauropods grew almost 40 metres in length and weighed up to 100 tonnes. But the preserved footprints, which span almost a metre across, are believed to be from a smaller specimen estimated to have been 18m long with a weight of 30 tonnes.
Excavators on site with AAOD Museum and Dinosaur Dream Victoria, 2018.
'The sauropod footprints are exceptionally well-preserved –the impression of a giant thumb claw is clearly visible on most of the fore feet and, in some, the impressions of individual toes can be identified,' Mrs Jones said.
The excavation was led by Executive Chairman of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum David Elliot in April last year.
The track was discovered after floods moved a creek bed in 2000, but the landowner initially dismissed the idea the footprints were made by dinosaurs.
Dinosaur footprints found preserved in an outback creek bed near Winton in central-west Queensland. Photograph: Qld government
The longest sequence of sauropod footprints could be followed continuously for more than 40 metres. Some of the footprints revealed incredible details about the sauropod’s feet and claws.
The tracks were extremely fragile which made the removal from the creek bed a slow process to not ruin the discovery. So far the team has moved one quarter of the most delicate parts of track, including an area that would otherwise have been swept away in the recent Queensland flood.
Lifting out the sauropod trackway sections. All up, the preserved track is estimated to weigh 500 tonnes.
Mr Elliott is hopeful the attraction, named March of the Titanosaurs, will be open to the public from May 2020.
“Its value as a tourist attraction for western Queensland is just phenomenal,” said Elliot.
