Steps from Deep Time: A 200-Metre Dinosaur Trail Emerges in an Oxfordshire Quarry
On a hot British morning this summer, a team of paleontologists and local quarry workers stood in silence as a new kind of road opened beneath their boots: a ribbon of ancient footprints, pressed into stone and laid out like a prehistoric boardwalk. The trackway runs more than 200 metres across a slab of rock at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire — an extraordinary stretch of fossilised steps that reads like a page torn from a Middle Jurassic diary.
“You don’t just find something like this; you rediscover a place where creatures once moved,” said Dr. Kirsty Edgar, a palaeontologist from the University of Birmingham, who helped lead this season’s excavation. “It’s rare to get such a long, continuous record. It gives you a sense of movement, of behavior — not just an isolated footprint but a story that walks by.”
The discovery isn’t entirely out of the blue. Dewars Farm has been generous in the past: track fragments were first reported there in the 1990s and again last year. But this year’s find came from a different seam of rock within the same working quarry, a fresh canvas that revealed a long procession of impressions — punctuated, like punctuation in a long sentence, by the fossilised remains of sea shells and even a sea urchin.
Reading the Stones: What Footprints Reveal
Fossilised footprints — or ichnites — are paleontology’s most intimate records. A bone tells you what an animal looked like; a footprint tells you how it moved, how it distributed weight, whether it walked alone or in a group. From stride length, scientists can estimate speed; from spacing and direction, they can infer whether the animals were hunting, migrating, or simply meandering along a shoreline.
“These impressions are behaviour made permanent,” explained Dr. Duncan Murdock from Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History. “When we find shells and a sea urchin near these tracks, it gives us ecological context: this wasn’t a dense forest. It was likely a lagoonal setting — shallow water, mudflats — where dinosaurs and marine creatures shared the margins of life.”
To put this into global context: the Jurassic Period lasted from about 201 to 145 million years ago. Many of Britain’s renowned dinosaur fossils date to the Middle Jurassic (roughly 174–163 million years ago), when sea levels and climates were in flux and the landscapes that would become present-day Oxfordshire were a patchwork of lagoons, floodplains and shallow seas.
The Human Side of Unearthing
At the quarry, the mood is a mix of childlike wonder and the quiet reverence of people who have come to care for a place of layers. “You get used to finding stones and fossils, but when you step back and see a sequence of footprints like a frozen parade, it stops you,” said Jade Hollis, who grew up a few miles from the site and now works at the quarry. “Everyone on site came over. Even the diggers had to pause their machines.”
Local residents speak of the quarry as part workplace, part landscape memory. In nearby villages, the discovery has become dinner-table conversation. “My grandfather used to tell tales of the old pits,” said Alan Brooks, a retired farmer who walks past the quarry most mornings. “But to think of beasts the size of buses padding through what used to be our moor — it’s humbling. It’s like the land remembers.”
How Scientists Capture a Walk Across Deep Time
Excavating a trackway is equal parts archaeology, geology and forensic science. Teams gently remove overburden, document layers, and use high-resolution photography, lidar and photogrammetry to make 3D models that can be studied by researchers anywhere in the world. Plaster casts may be taken of the most significant impressions, and samples of the surrounding sediment are analysed for microfossils and chemical signatures.
- Photogrammetry and 3D scanning preserve detail for future study and online exhibitions.
- Microfossil analysis (foraminifera, spores) helps define the age and environment of deposition.
- Trace fossils, like burrows or ripple marks, help reconstruct water depth and tidal influence.
Because trackways are surface features, they are vulnerable: exposure to the elements can erode them quickly. That’s why prompt documentation and conservation are essential. In recent years, digital archiving has allowed museums and universities to make these records public, sharing them with classrooms and citizen scientists worldwide.
Why This Matters Beyond Oxfordshire
There’s a human hunger in discoveries like this. We’re not merely adding a specimen to a cabinet; we’re connecting threads between deep time and our present moment. How did ecosystems respond to sea-level changes during the Jurassic? What can those transitions tell us about resilience and adaptability — lessons that are increasingly relevant as we confront climate change?
“Fossils are time capsules,” said Dr. Edgar. “They remind us that environments shift, that species adapt, migrate, or disappear. But they also remind us of continuity — that life leaves traces, and we, too, leave traces on the planet.”
The find also sparks a conversation about land use and heritage. Quarries are working landscapes — sources of stone and employment — but they can also be windows into the past. Balancing industry with conservation is a delicate act that requires local engagement and scientific stewardship.
What the Trackway Could Tell Us Next
Researchers will be analysing the track spacing, footprint depth and associated fossils over the coming months. Those metrics could suggest whether the animals were bipeds or quadrupeds, whether they were travelling quickly or slowly, and whether the surface was firm or waterlogged when the impressions were made.
There are broader questions too. Could this be a multi-species corridor? Are there signs of hoofed mammals or crocodyliforms mingled among the dino prints? Each answer will reshape our portrait of an ancient Oxfordshire coastline.
Listen: The World Underfoot
Next time you walk along a hedgerow or across a field, consider the thin skin of time beneath your shoes. What will we leave on the world for future eyes to read? The Dewars Farm trackway is a reminder that our world is an archive, always being written and rewritten by acts of geology and life.
So, what do you think deserves to be preserved for future generations — the stories written in stone, or the landscapes we still shape today? If a strip of mud 165 million years old can bridge a gap between a quarry worker and a palaeontologist, perhaps we can do the same for other urgent conversations about stewardship, history and our shared planet.
For now, the footprints lie open in the quarry, a long, silent sentence from another age. Scientists will study them, the public will marvel, and the land will keep its slow, patient watch.
