A large boulder that is used as a decoration in the foyer of a rural Australian high school is actually covered with dinosaur footprints – it took just about 20 years before everyone notices it. After investigating the old rock, paleontologists from the Dinosaur Lab of the University of Queensland believe that the stone has one of the highest concentrations of the land of fossilized footprints. These small tracks are made by dozens of small, two-legged herbivores during the early Jurassic period. The team describes their findings in a study published on 10 March in the magazine Historical biology.
The Biloela State High School in East Australia is located near the Callide coal mine. Employees at this larger operation often blow up rock formations to reach their payloads. About 20 years ago, a geologist who worked on the site took knowledge of a rock formation with some looked like chicken footprints – although chickens with three instead of the standard four or five toes. The geologist took out the rock before the area was planned for mining and donated it to the Bioela State High School where his wife taught.
For years the Boulder greeted students and faculty as a symbol of the geological history of the area. However, after the attention of the local media on newly discovered dinosaur fossils in the area in 2021, the school decided to ask for a further inspection of the rock mine rock mine. University of Queensland Paleontologist Anthony Romilio visited Biloela State High School, where he quickly realized the meaning of the album.
In the new study, Romilio and colleagues documented a total of 66 fossilized footprints of 47 separate dinosaurs, all within a three square foot part of the rock.
“It’s a large number of dinosaurs, and it’s the highest number in one album in Australia,” Romilio said NBC News.
After analyzing casts made of the footprints, the team determined that they belonged Anomoepus scambusA planting dinosaur that existed in the early Jurassic period about 200 million years ago. A. Scambus Was a relatively small animal, with a leg height ranging from about 10 centimeters to slightly more than a foot.
Speak with the Australian Broadcasting CorporationRomilio explained that discoveries such as those at Biula State High School are a reminder of how important it is for mining activities to go through carefully in their work.
“If you have an industry such as Open-Pit Mining, the general assumption is that you are unable to extract and retain Dinosaurus footprints because the process [to mine] is quite destructive, ” he said on March 11th. “That is another idea that is crushed because we can get these great fossils.”