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World's Largest Dinosaur Footprints Discovered In Western Australia (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The largest known dinosaur footprints have been discovered in Western Australia, including 1.7 meter prints left by gigantic herbivores. Until now, the biggest known dinosaur footprint was a 106cm track discovered in the Mongolian desert and reported last year. At the new site, along the Kimberley shoreline in a remote region of Western Australia, paleontologists discovered a rich collection of dinosaur footprints in the sandstone rock, many of which are only visible at low tide. The prints, belonging to about 21 different types of dinosaur, are also thought to be the most diverse collection of prints in the world. Steve Salisbury, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Queensland told ABC News: "We've got several tracks up in that area that are about 1.7 meters long. So most people would be able to fit inside tracks that big, and they indicate animals that are probably around 5.3 to 5.5 meters at the hip, which is enormous." "It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the early Cretaceous period," he said. The findings were reported in the Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The largest tracks belonged to sauropods, huge Diplodocus-like herbivores with long necks and tails. The scientists also discovered tracks from about four different types of ornithopod dinosaurs (two-legged herbivores) and six types of armored dinosaurs, including Stegosaurs, which had not previously been seen in Australia. At the time the prints were left, 130m years ago, the area was a large river delta and dinosaurs would have traversed wet sandy areas between surrounding forests.

9 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Amazing! by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Insightful
    When you think you're having a bad day, imagine what daily life must've been like for our mammalian ancestors in this age of giant dinos.

    Perhaps even more amazing, consider the catastrophic bad luck that befell the planet's dominant life form, and allowed our kind a window in which to proliferate.

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    1. Re:Amazing! by tezbobobo · · Score: 2

      I always thought that. But, when I see videos of jaguars attacking caimans and mongooses and honeybadgers attacking cobras and mambas, I start to realise how adept mammals are at killing. I think we over identify with some of our most lethal cousins. Just because I'm a mammal and I'm not a killing machine doesn't mean a cheetah or wolf pack isn't totally bad ass. WAY more scary than a velociraptor - https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

    2. Re: Amazing! by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

      Except, sauropod dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded, just like an ostrich, penguin, chicken, pigeon, owl, or hawk is now.

      T-Rex was basically the biggest, most bad-ass ostrich the world has ever known(*). And make no mistake... an angry ostrich can fuck you up quite badly.

      (*) In terms of genetic distance, T-Rex had more in common with a modern sparrow than it did with any modern reptile or amphibian.

    3. Re:Amazing! by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 2

      The irony is that the homosapien's violent nature wouldn't necessarily be enough to beat down on neanderthals since they were bigger and smarter than us, and that it was our SOCIAL nature that allowed us to gang up on them. Irony being that despite it (social behavior) being quite possibly the reason we became the dominant (and I suppose only remaining) hominid, we still can't get along.

      Not only that. They have better tools and were built better for running and long distance trekking than Neanderthals.

      There is very little to suggest Homo Sapien killed off Neanderthals in direct confrontations. It was more a function of out-breeding them and out-competing them in harvesting resources. Barring a plague, over-predation or genocide, to go extinct, you do not need to get killed off or fail. You just need to succeed less often over millenia.

  2. Re:Useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    It is useless to study dinosaurs. They don't exist and haven't existed for tens of millions of years.

    I see you're unfamiliar with birds.

  3. Re: Useless by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    Paleontology has no such value, no matter how much you'd like to pretend otherwise. It is a waste of resources.

    Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

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  4. Re:Australia by OzPeter · · Score: 2

    How 'bout a 'bloomin onion, govner?

    FFS

    1. 'blooming onion' is a menu item from a US restaurant chain serving American cuisine in which the items are typically and arbitrarily given Australian names. (although in this particular case the item does not have an Australianized named)

    2. 'govner' is a bad rendition of an English (UK) word which does not have any traction in Oz.

    Struth mate. Nothing you wrote has anything to do with straya and you definetly can't talk strine.

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  5. Re: Useless by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3

    One of the famous mathematicians of the 1800s was proud that his work had no practical applications. (Sorry, I don't remember which one.) Lots of mathematical work seems that way, yet his work and much else that seemed useless at the time is now essential for fields like cryptography.

    Paleontology? Toy makers, movie makers, and vast hordes of children love dinosaurs. For some children, interest in dinosaurs leads to an interest in science generally.

    Paleontology leads directly into study of evolution and helps damage mythologies such as religion. (Is that why you're so sensitive?) If you are so interested in preventing the waste of resources, do something to prevent colleges from teaching their students how to provoke riots.

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  6. Re:How old are they? by PPH · · Score: 2

    No. They would have been killed off by something meaner and more poisonous.

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    Have gnu, will travel.