An excavation at a limestone quarry in Oxfordshire in the U.K. has yielded a massive, downright prehistoric find—not one, not dozens, but hundreds of footprints left behind by dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic Period. Researchers are deeming it the most significant dinosaur track discovery of the past 25 years.

In 2023, quarry worker Gary Johnson was stripping back clay with his vehicle when he felt “unusual bumps” on the floor of Dewars Farm Quarry. Experts from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham were summoned and, along with the quarry crew, embarked on a week-long dig. The team turned up some 200 footprints in five trackways—one stretching more than 492 feet in length—imprinted hundreds of millions of years ago by a sauropod and a theropod.

Dinosaur footprints excavated at Dewars Farm Quarry. Photo: Emma Nicholls, OUMNH.

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs,” said Kirsty Edgar, professor of micropalaeontology at the University of Birmingham, in a statement, “revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited.”

Four of the trackways bear footprints likely made by Cetiosaurus, a long-necked herbivore that was alive about 168 million years ago. A cousin of the Diplodocus, the dinosaur was the first sauropod to have its bones described, in 1842. The fifth track was created by a Megalosaurus, a 30-foot-long carnivore known for its three-clawed feet. Its prints measure about 25 inches long, with a stride span of some 8.8 feet.

The excavation site at Dewars Farm Quarry. Photo: University of Birmingham.

At a section of the site, the prints of the herbivore and carnivore intersect, posing an intriguing question about if or how the two species made contact.

“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 Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH).

(Notably, the Megalosaurus was the first-ever dinosaur to be scientifically named, in 1824, by Oxford paleontologist William Buckland. That the team unearthed Megalosaurus tracks on the 200th year of its christening, Nicholls told the New York Times, is “completely coincidental but really spine-tingling.”)

Dinosaur footprint excavated at Dewars Farm Quarry. Photo: Emma Nicholls, OUMNH.

The newly uncovered tracks join many others that have surfaced in the area. In 1997, limestone quarry work uncovered more than 40 sets of footprints in trackways that measured about 590 feet in length.

For shedding fresh light on the dinosaurs that dwelt in the U.K. during the Middle Jurassic epoch, the site has been recognized as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a conservation status designated by the British government. Informally, paleontologists have termed the area the “dinosaur highway.”

The dinosaur footprints unearthed at Dewars Farm Quarry in the 1990s. Photo: Paul Barrett.

Unlike the original location of the 1997 find, which was buried and is no longer accessible, the latest site has been diligently recorded. Using aerial photography, the researchers have built 3D models of the site to better document and study the tracks. More than 20,000 images were also made off the prints.

“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 OUMNH. “Along with other fossils like burrows, shells, and plants, we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.”

3D model of the intersecting footprints. Photo: Luke Meade, University of Birmingham.

The discovery, set to feature on the second season of the BBC Two series Digging for Britain, will also be the subject of a January 30 talk at OUMNH, as part of its “Breaking Ground” exhibition. The show will array images and video footage from the dig site, as well as key fossils (including of the Megalosaurus) and studies from the archives of Buckland and his scientific illustrator wife, Mary.