Overview
- A week-long 2025 excavation mapped four trackways and about 200 additional prints, including a 220-metre trail with nearly 100 metre-long footprints—the longest individual sauropod trackway recorded in Europe.
- Researchers describe the Oxfordshire surface as the largest dinosaur track site in the UK and possibly the largest mapped globally when earlier finds from the 1990s are included.
- Most tracks were left by large sauropods likely similar to Cetiosaurus, with rarer three‑toed prints attributed to meat‑eating megalosaurs.
- High‑resolution drone photogrammetry and 3D modelling from more than 20,000 images yielded gait and speed estimates of roughly 2 m/s (about 4–5 mph), and one print suggests a brief one‑leg weight shift.
- Sediment sampling and accompanying finds—marine invertebrates, plant material and a crocodile jaw—indicate coastal mudflats 166 million years ago; the working quarry remains closed to the public as Natural England and operator Smiths Bletchington discuss preservation options.