A new analysis of dinosaur tracks found at a courtyard location in a restaurant in Leshan City, China, indicates that they originate in the track-rich Jiaguan Formation.
“The discovery was made last year by a curious diner,” said Dr. Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist with Dinosaur Lab at the University of Queensland.
“This person noticed around a dozen regularly spaced pits in the ground in the outdoor courtyard of the Garden Restaurant in Sichuan Province.”
“It turns out they are the 50-60-cm (1.6-2-foot) long fossilized footprints of the long-necked sauropod dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous period around 100 million years ago.”
“This is a really exciting find because it shows that important dinosaur tracks can be found in unexpected places.”
The ‘pits’ were observed in the 1950s but were covered over by the then homeowner to make the ground more level.
New owners converted the home into a restaurant about three years ago, and the pits were uncovered again.
“But still nothing was thought to be unusual,” said Dr. Lida Xing, a paleontologist at the China University of Geosciences.
“That was until in mid-2022 when an observant diner pointed out that they might be something more than simply holes in the ground.”
“The footprints went unnoticed for so long, but once you know what they are, it’s hard to unsee them.”
“The region has no skeletal record of dinosaurs, so these fossilized tracks provide invaluable information about the types of dinosaurs that lived in the area.”
The researchers estimate the ‘restaurant dinosaurs’ to have been around 10 m (33 feet) long.
“We compared the size of the footprints with complete fossil skeletons,” Dr. Romilio said.
“We also know the dinosaurs were taking quite short steps for such a large animal, with a walking speed of around 2 km (1.2 miles) per hour.”
“Our research highlights the importance of everyday people making valuable scientific discoveries,” he…
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