iStock/Thinkstock(BRISBANE, Australia) — A group of scientists is claiming to have found the largest-ever dinosaur footprint in a region nicknamed “Australia’s Jurassic Park.”
The team of paleontologists, hailing from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, report that an “unprecedented 21 different types of dinosaur tracks have been identified on a 25-kilometre stretch of the Dampier Peninsula coastline.”
According to the university, its scientists braved sharks, crocodiles and massive tides in order to unveil dinosaur tracks embedded in what they say are 127- to 140-million-year-old rocks in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Their findings were ultimately published in The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and that study’s lead author, Dr. Steve Salisbury, likened the finding to a real-life version of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster in a press release issued by the university.
“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,” Salisbury said of the scientists’ findings.
“It’s such a magical place — Australia’s own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting,” he added.
While it might be too much of a trek for most Americans to visit in person, the school has released images and video of the tracks for everyone to see.
Simply put, they are huge: One image shows a man lying next to a footprint, and its size encompasses his entire body.
Also, the landscape surrounding the prints appears barren and serene — the region where the tracks were found is sparsely populated, and inhabited primarily by the Goolarabooloo tribe, who collaborated with the scientists in this expedition, according to the university.
Salisbury described the prints as being diverse.
“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 armored dinosaurs,” he said.
Among the tracks, Salisbury noted, is the only confirmed evidence for stegosaurus in Australia.
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