- The footprint is thought to be the biggest of its kind in the area.
- It will be shown at the Rotunda Museum in the town.
- Scientists who looked at the footprint Woods found think it was made by a big carnivore like a Megalosaurus.
Scientists all over the world are excited about a major paleontological find in the UK county of Yorkshire. It is a nearly meter-long (3.3 feet) footprint of a large (probably meat-eating) dinosaur that was found in Burniston Bay near the town of Scarborough, on what is called the UK’s “dinosaur coast.” The footprint is thought to be the biggest of its kind in the area. It will be shown at the Rotunda Museum in the town.
An American news station, says that the footprint was found in April 2021 by a local researcher named Marie Woods. “I just couldn’t believe what I saw… I had to take a second look. When I was out with friends, I saw a few smaller prints, but nothing like this. I can’t say anymore that archaeologists don’t study dinosaurs “Woods said this to a local news station.
She talked to the fossil experts in the area, but none of them knew the trail she was talking about. Then she contacted Dr. Dean Lomax, a palaeontologist and honorary visiting scientist at the University of Manchester. “Marie called me while she was on the beach with the fossil in front of her,” said Lomax, who wrote a study with Woods that came out Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society.
Scientists who looked at the footprint Woods found think it was made by a big carnivore like a Megalosaurus. Lomax said that the shape of the print and how the claws dug into the ground show that the animal was sitting or squatting before it stood up.
“The most interesting thing about our footprint is a long piece that is still there at the back of the foot. This is an impression of the metapodium, which is the back of the foot. The presence could mean that our big meat-eater sat down in the mud and then got up and walked away.”
Geologist John Hudson from the area says that the find is more proof that meat-eating dinosaurs lived in this part of the world during the Jurassic period.
If the print is of a Megalosaurus, it would have been one of the largest predators of its time. It had a big head with sharp, serrated teeth, and CNN said that its body was between 26 and 29 feet long, or between 8 and 9 metres.
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