An “exceptional” collection of dinosaur footprints that could be the biggest ever recorded has been found by two amateur enthusiasts on an expedition near France’s Jura mountains, paleontologists said on Tuesday.
Prints up to 2m in diameter and recurring over a large area have been uncovered near the village of Plagne in eastern France, 48km west of Geneva, the National Center of Scientific Research said.
The center said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated.
“According to the researchers’ initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen,” it said.
Pierre Hantzpergue, a paleontologist at the University of Lyon, who verified the prints with a colleague at the research center, said the perfectly preserved tracks could make Plagne one of the most significant dinosaur locations in the world.
“What is remarkable about this site ... is firstly the sheer size of the footprints. They are really enormous. This is new. Some very big footprints have been found in the US, but I don’t think they are as big as these,” he said.
The site’s other — equally important — aspect was the geographical spread. The research center said they were formed “over dozens if not hundreds of meters.”
“These are very large distances,” Hantzpergue said. “We’ve seen tracks of maybe 50 meters in France, around 100 meters in Switzerland, and the world record is in Portugal ... with about 150 meters. Now, we still have many hectares to search, but we will undoubtedly have more than 150 meters at Plagne — the biggest that is known in the world.”
The prints are believed to have been left by sauropods, herbivorous giants that roamed the region about 150 million years ago. They appear to have been preserved by a thick layer of limestone sediment dating from the late Jurassic period, the geological era named after the Jura mountains, which lie to the north of the tracks. The footprints are believed to have emerged after top soil eroded.
Despite the region’s reputation for paleontological discoveries, this latest and probably most spectacular find was left to amateurs from the local town of Oyonnax, near Geneva, to stumble upon.
Marie-Helene Marcaud, a teacher, and Patrice Landry, a geologist, uncovered the tracks on April 5 during one of their regular expeditions with the Naturalists’ Society of Oyonnax. Amazed by their find, they contacted Hantzpergue and Jean-Michel Mazin at the National Center of Scientific Research to confirm their authenticity.
A string of discoveries in the ancient landscape of the Franco-Swiss border has allowed scientists to piece together the history of biodiversity over the past 200 million years.
In 2004 thousands of footprints, of dinosaurs and other creatures including marine crocodiles and mammoths, were revealed on the Swiss side of the border when a motorway project began. On the French side, sauropod tracks were found at Coisia in 2004, and on the floor of the Loulle quarry in 2006.
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