England Quarry Worker Makes Incredible 'Dinosaur Highway' Discovery

A quarry worker in Southern England unearthed something that is dated at more than 166 million years old.

Adam Mothersille-Grant, left, and Noel Munguia visit the Dino Safari that features animatronic dinosaurs at the Cox Science Center and Aquarium on October 14, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Dino Safari will be on display until April 27, 2025. / GREG LOVETT/PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Back in June, a team of more than 100 people descended upon the Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire in southern England.

They were there for paleontology work, to excavate and discover some more information about the Middle Jurassic period.

That work has been expanded on this week, as a worker made an incredible discovery in the limestone quarry.

They came across unusual bumps, which turned out to be the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” that consisted of nearly 200 tracks and have been dated to be at least 166 million years old.

It helps expand the information that was already known about the area, something researchers at Oxford and Birmingham are very excited about.

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham, via the Associated Press and shared at NBC News.

A majority of the tracks that were discovered are thought to be made by Cetiosaurus, a herbivore that is referred to as sauropods. Gigantic creatures, they grew to approximately 60 feet in length with astonishingly long necks.

Four of the tracks are thought to have belonged to them.

A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus.

A predatory dinosaur that grew to be about 30 feet in length, they possessed a unique triple claw that left a distinct track in the Earth.

They were the first dinosaurs to be scientifically named more than 200 years ago.

Given where the tracks were discovered, questions have been raised about how much the animals interacted with each other since they crossed at some points like a normal highway or busy road cars drive along today.

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found,” said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

This isn’t the first discovery of track sites.

Just about three decades ago there were 40 tracks in a limestone quarry in the area.

Unfortunately, that area is no longer easily accessible and evidence is hard to come by because of the lack of photographic equipment at the time.

What makes the most recent unearthing so important is that the means to document them now exist.

More than 20,000 digital images were taken, and drones were used to render 3-D images.

With so much new information, even more exact data about the dinosaurs, such as size and how quickly they moved, can be figured out.

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out,” said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum. “Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.”

Anyone looking for more information about the digs and discoveries can tune in to BBC’s “Digging for Britain” that will air this upcoming week.