China’s “Dinosaur Dance Floor” and Yorkshire’s Largest Ever Dinosaur Print

Hundreds of prints have been discovered at a “dinosaur dance floor” in Longxiang Village, Shanghang County, located in China’s Fujian Province.

The team of Chinese researchers found the prints at a location that they believe the dinosaurs used as a pathway during the Late Cretaceous Period. Since the site was once adjacent to water, the dinosaurs would have frequented that area to drink as well as eat.

The first bunch of tracks (more than 240 of them) was discovered in November of last year. And just recently, 364 more prints were found. All together, a little over 600 footprints have been discovered at the 1,600-square-meter track site. And the researchers are not finished yet, as it’s been estimated that more than 1,000 tracks will be found as the excavation work continues.

Based on initial analysis of the tracks, it is believed that at least eight different types of dinosaurs left the prints that have been dated back to 80 million years ago. The types of dinosaurs that presumably left the tracks include sauropods, ornithopods, and theropods.

Some of the tracks were made by sauropods.

The prints included a variety of tracks from different sized dinosaurs. For example, sauropods were large dinosaurs that could measure as long as 20 meters. On the other hand, much smaller prints that measured less than 10 centimeters long were also found at the site and were left behind by a small bird-footed dinosaur that would have been approximately 1 meter in length (3.3 feet).

The scientists have noted that this is the biggest and most diverse site of its kind from the Cretaceous Period that’s ever been found in China. Several pictures of the dinosaur tracks can be seen here.

In other footprint news, a woman named Marie Woods was out collecting shellfish in Yorkshire, England, when she found a huge track. The print was actually photographed last November by a fossil collector named Rob Taylor but experts didn’t realize how significant his finding was until Marie re-discovered it. It is the largest ever fossilized print found in Yorkshire.

The footprint was believed to have been made by a megalosaurus. Megalosaurus was a large theropod dinosaur that lived between 170 million and 155 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic Period. These carnivores measured about 9 meters in length (29.5 feet).

Megalosaurus

The print contained three toes and you can even see where its claws dug into the ground. Based on the size of the track, it is believed that this specific dinosaur more than likely had a hip height of approximately 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) and its body would have measured between 8 and 9 meters in length (between 26.2 and 29.5 feet).

A picture of the footprint can be seen here.

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