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A boulder initially serving as a decorative piece in a rural Australian high school lobby has been discovered to be adorned with dinosaur footprints, a finding that remained unnoticed for nearly two decades. Paleontologists from the University of Queensland’s Dinosaur Lab have identified this rock as potentially housing one of Australia’s most concentrated collections of fossilized footprints. These marks were made by numerous small, two-legged herbivorous dinosaurs during the early Jurassic period. The research detailing this discovery was published on March 10 in the journal Historical Biology.
Located in Eastern Australia, Biloela State High School sits in proximity to the Callide Coal Mine, a site where large-scale geological activities, including blasting, take place to access coal deposits. About 20 years prior, a geologist noticed a rock formation resembling chicken footprints—albeit with three toes, diverging from the usual four or five. Realizing the significance of this find, the geologist extracted the boulder before mining commenced and donated it to the school where his spouse taught.
For years, this boulder was a fixture in the school, symbolizing the region’s geological heritage. The situation shifted in 2021 when increased media scrutiny surrounding new fossil discoveries nearby prompted the school to consult with experts to examine the rock more thoroughly. University of Queensland’s paleontologist Anthony Romilio visited the school and quickly recognized the importance of the stone.
In their recent study, Romilio and his colleagues recorded 66 fossilized footprints, attributed to 47 distinct dinosaur species, all found within a three-square-foot area of the boulder.
Romilio noted, “This represents an extraordinary number of dinosaurs, marking the highest concentration detected in a single slab within Australia,” as he shared with NBC News.
Upon examining molds of the footprints, the research team identified them as belonging to Anomoepus scambus, a herbivorous dinosaur that roamed the Earth around 200 million years ago during the early Jurassic. This dinosaur was relatively small, with legs measuring approximately 10 centimeters to just over one foot in height.
In conversation with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Romilio emphasized that findings like those from Biloela State High School underscore the necessity for caution in mining practices.
He remarked, “With an industry like open-pit mining, there is often an assumption that extracting and preserving dinosaur footprints is unfeasible due to the destructive nature of the process. This notion has been overturned, as we can indeed recover remarkable fossils.”
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www.popsci.com