MORE than 200 dinosaur footprints have been discovered in a quarry near the
sanctuary of Fatima in Portugal. The footprints form at least 15 tracks, two
of which are more than 140 metres long. The longest track has 90 footprints.
鈥淚t鈥檚 as if the track were fresh 鈥� as if we just saw the animals passing,鈥�
says Vanda Santos, a Portuguese palaeontologist.
Taken together with the single 141-metre track discovered near Lisbon two
years ago, they make Portugal one of the world鈥檚 most important sources of
fossilised dinosaur footprints.
The discovery dates from the Middle Jurassic period, about 180 million
years ago. 鈥淭his must be by far the best Middle Jurassic site in the world,鈥�
says Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado at Denver, who is working on
the site. 鈥淭he late Jurassic has many fossils but the Middle Jurassic is very
poorly understood.鈥� During the Middle Jurassic, the Iberian peninsula was on
the shores of a proto-Atlantic, and was a close neighbour of Britain and
Canada.
Advertisement
The footprints were made by sauropods. These long-necked, herbivorous
dinosaurs were up to 30 metres long and weighed as much as 25 tonnes. The
discovery should help to clarify the anatomy of these giants. 鈥淲hen we have
only bones, we do not know how much flesh the feet had,鈥� says Lockley. 鈥淣ow we
can learn something about the shape of the feet, because the footprints give a
very clear impression of the digits.鈥�
The new site also confirms the presence of sauropods well before the Upper
Jurassic, 100 to 120 million years ago, when they are generally assumed to
have reached their peak in size and diversity.