Impressions Of The Past

Australian scientists studying the smallest known dinosaur footprints, left by a creature the size of a sparrow, also discovered the largest, left by a dinosaur 700,000 times as heavy.

WHILE THE FOSSILISED bones of dinosaurs tell us about the size, shape and anatomy of the animals they once belonged to, fossilised footprints can tell us a whole different story about these animals, revealing clues to prehistoric behaviour.

In 2017 Dr Anthony Romilio of the University of Queensland was part of the team that first recorded dinosaur footprints on the coast of the Kimberley in Western Australia that were a whopping 1.7m in length – big enough for many people to lie down inside. These were left by longnecked, herbivorous dinosaurs called sauropods, which walked along river deltas 130 million years ago. Known for centuries by Aboriginal people, these tracks were much bigger than the previous biggest known dinosaur footprints, which measured 106cm across and were discovered the year before in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.