Dinosaur stampede

The foot prints below us look almost fresh and could have been made by birds. They go every which way across the red slab of hardened clay. A much larger set of tracks runs through the middle of them. The big ones are deeply imprinted and obviously created by something huge.

“These tracks are 95 million years old,” Alan our guide says. “The big guy was a predatory meat-eating dinosaur, known as a pteropod. It was similar to Tyrannosaurus and he was after a meal of the smaller dinosaurs that were feeding at the water’s edge.”

The smaller tracks leave no doubt about the panic recorded in the clay. “Whether the large dinosaur caught any of the smaller ones we don’t know,” Alan continues, “maybe if they dig further into the bank we might find evidence of it.” He points to the edge of the excavated area, and the enclosed wall of the building.

Our dinosaur stampede encounter is at Lark Quarry, about 120km from Winton in Outback Queensland. The tracks left by the dinosaur stampede have now been surrounded by a building to protect them.

“They might be 95 million years old,” Alan says, “but exposure to the sun, wind and people with geologist’s hammers would soon erode them. This building is designed so that it can be extended if there if money to continue excavating further back along the layer of the tracks.”

Our eyes return to the footprints and the thought of a huge lizard, running on its hind legs and standing five metres high, that ate people-sized prey, doesn’t bear thinking about.