Museum tracks giant dinosaur footprints

A sixty-metre long reconstruction of the trackway of the giant carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus was unveiled by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Colin Lucas, on the lawn in front of the University Museum on 21 March, to mark the conclusion SET99 week. Staff from the University Museum of Natural History and the Department of Earth Sciences have recently completed the measuring and description of the largest dinosaur trackway site in Britain, and perhaps Europe, situated thirteen miles north-east of Oxford. In spring 1997, Mr Christopher Jackson, a Birmingham school teacher, learnt of the presence of dinosaur footprints on the floor of the old limestone quarries at Ardley. Because the limestone surface in which the footprints are preserved is too fragile for conservation in situ, the site has been mapped and described in detail with the aid of Global Positioning Satellite techniques that allow mapping of individual footprints with an accuracy of millimetres. The quarter of a mile square site reveals Jurassic limestones some 168 million years old, formed at a time when Britain lay in the tropics. Between thirty and forty trackways are present, measuring up to 200m in length, which have been linked to the skeletal remains of dinosaurs known to have existed in this area. The three-toed footprints, some two metres apart, were produced by the eight-metre long bipedal carnivorous Megalosaurus (`Great Lizard'). A second trackway was made by the 15m long herbivorous Centiosaurus (`Whale Lizard'). Bones from the dinosaurs responsible for the Oxfordshire tracks are on display in the Museum. The recording of the site was made possible by the owners of the site, Haul Waste, with financial support from the Natural Environment Research Council, English Nature, and the Hulme Surplus Fund.