Stampede Story: Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways

The Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways lies about 110km southwest of Winton, Queensland, which is on Greyhound Australia’s Brisbane. There are also connecting bus services between Winton and Longreach that meet up with the train service. There are several tour companies operating out of Winton and the surrounding region that run tours to Lark Quarry.

Ninety-five million years ago, around 150 small, bipedal dinosaurs were happily drinking at a lake. On the lookout for an easy meal, a huge meat-eating theropod crept towards the watering hole. After stalking the smaller dinosaurs, it suddenly turned and charged. Panic set in. The herd fled in all directions, leaving trails of footprints in the mud. The site of this chaotic scene was a vast river plain of swamps and sandy channels, bordered by lush green lowland forest. With over a metre of rain every year, the river sometimes flooded. Immediately after the stampede, the waters rose, covering the tracks, before the mud had time to dry out. Over the years layer upon layer of sandy sediment built up over the tracks, until eventually they compressed to form hard rock.

Discovery of the Tracks

A local station manager first discovered the tracks in the1960s. Initially, he thought they were fossilised bird footprints. But when scientists arrived in the area in the early 1970s, they realised they were looking at huge numbers of dinosaur tracks. After carefully taking latex moulds of many of the 3,300 footprints, scientists measured them for stride length and angle. The tracks showed that three types of dinosaurs were present during the stampede. First was a species of carnivorous coelurosaur called Skartopus australis (‘southern nimble foot’), which was about the size of a chicken and probably hunted in a pack. Scientists think that some coelurosaurs could be the direct ancestors of modern-day birds. There was also a larger, plant-eating ornithopod, Wintonopus latomorum (‘Winton foot’). And then there was the marauding 9m-tall theropod, Australovenator wintonensis, slightly smaller than a Tyrannosaurus Rex. All the tracks give an incredible insight into a few terrifying minutes of an alien world millions of years ago — when dinosaurs ruled, and the reign of mammals was yet to come.

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Dinosaur Trails:

Dinosaur footprints have been found in more than 1,000 locations, on every continent except Antarctica. Here are a few highlights:

PLAGNE, FRANCE: Some of the largest dinosaur footprints in the world were made about 150 million years ago by sauropods (long-necked herbivores) in chalky sediment near the French–Swiss border. The prints are around 1.5m wide, meaning the dinosaurs were more than 25m long and weighed about 30 tonnes.


ROCKY HILL, USA: Connecticut’s answer to Jurassic Park, Dinosaur State Park lets you view dinosaur footprints left 200 million years ago on mudflats near Rocky Hill, while a display shows how the tracks were made.

PIONEER VALLEY, USA: Around 190 million years ago, Northampton’s Pioneer Valley area was a subtropical swamp inhabited by carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs. Preserved on the banks of the Connecticut River are 134 footprints, representing three distinct species. As the majority of the tracks head west, scientists think that some dinosaur species travelled in packs.

ZHUCHENG, CHINA: More than 3,000 dinosaur footprints from at least six species exist near Zhucheng, known locally as ‘Dinosaur City’ due to the large number of fossils found nearby. All the 100-million-year-old prints face the same way, supporting the idea that dinosaurs travelled in packs. This could also have been the site of a stampede similar to the one at Lark Quarry.