Uncovering a Jurassic Giant: Europe’s longest sauropod trackway
In 2024, paleontologists working at Dewars Farm Quarry near Bicester in Oxfordshire, England, uncovered a remarkable new window into the Middle Jurassic period. The excavation added around 200 more footprints to a growing collection and revealed four distinct trackways. Among these, one is now recognized as Europe’s longest sauropod dinosaur trackway, a monumental clue to the size and movement of these long-necked herbivores some 166 million years ago.
The team, a collaboration including researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Birmingham, Liverpool John Moores University, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, has been paving the way to understanding how these ancient giants navigated their environment. The newly exposed footprint surface chronicles a scene that is both broader and deeper than a single footprint; it captures the rhythm of travel, the spacing of steps, and the relationship between track-bearing sediments and the creatures that made them.
Details of the discovery
Over seven days of careful fieldwork, the researchers confronted a much drier and harder ground than in prior seasons. They focused on a sequence of around 80 very large sauropod prints, up to 1 meter in length, arranged in a north-south orientation that stretches across the site. This arrangement forms a trackway that, at approximately 220 meters from the first to the last exposed footprint, ranks as the longest of its kind in Europe. The sheer scale of this trace fossil provides a rare glimpse into the gait and pace of giant dinosaurs that dominated the Middle Jurassic.
In addition to the long trackway, the expedition uncovered three other trackways of varying lengths. One of these is a continuation of prints first discovered in 2022, suggesting a broader, more interconnected activity pattern than previously understood. While not all footprints are currently exposed, ongoing work holds the promise of revealing an even longer surface once more data are integrated.
What the footprints tell us
These new finds are attributed to sauropods—large-bodied, long-necked herbivores such as Cetiosaurus. The footprints provide crucial context that skeleton fossils alone cannot: they illuminate how these dinosaurs moved, how many individuals traveled together, and how the landscape and climate of 166 million years ago influenced their behavior. According to experts, footprints and the sediments surrounding them offer complementary evidence about the environment, helping scientists reconstruct habitat conditions, dune or floodplain dynamics, and the sedimentary processes that preserved these traces.
Significance and future work
University of Birmingham professor Kirsty Edgar emphasizes the site’s importance. “This site in Oxfordshire is the largest dinosaur track site in the UK, and arguably now the largest mapped dinosaur track site in the world when we consider finds dating back to the 1990s on the same surface nearby.” The discovery adds a new chapter to the record of sauropod locomotion and environment during the Middle Jurassic, a period that is still yielding surprising insights from trace fossils.
Another important aspect of the project is the systematic sediment sampling undertaken alongside footprint excavation. By analyzing the sediments that underlie and fill the tracks, researchers hope to deduce more about the environmental conditions at the time of track formation and how preservation occurred. As work continues, more of the footprint surface is expected to be exposed, potentially revealing an even longer trackway and expanding understanding of this crucial paleontological site.
Looking ahead
Researchers anticipate further discoveries at Dewars Farm Quarry in the coming years. The collaboration plans continued field seasons, deeper sediment analyses, and a comprehensive description that will articulate the site’s full significance, identify new scientific discoveries, and outline preservation strategies for a landscape that remains a key portal to Earth’s deep past. As the surface continues to yield traces from a world long vanished, the Dewars Farm site stands as a powerful reminder of the value of footprint evidence in paleontology.
