A worker dug up clay in southern England.

What were those unusual bumps? 

That was the beginning of the discovery of the “dinosaur highway.” 

More than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire in June. It turns out the find includes nearly 200 tracks!

Let’s see what the tracks tell us. Four of the sets of tracks were made by gigantic, long-necked herbivores called sauropods. Scientists think they belonged to the species Cetiosaurus. That dinosaur grew to nearly 60 feet long. A fifth set of tracks belonged to the Megalosaurus. That dino was probably a ferocious, 30-foot-long predator. It left a triple-claw print. (It was also the first dinosaur to be scientifically named, two centuries ago.)

At one spot, the tracks cross. This makes scientists wonder: What happened when the meat-eating dinosaurs crossed paths with the plant-eaters? 

Nearly 30 years ago, scientists found 40 sets of footprints in a spot nearby. That was before digital cameras and drones. Little evidence remains of the findings.

But not this time. Workers took more than 20,000 digital images. They used drones to create 3-D models of the prints. That’s a trove of documentation. Future scientists could study it to answer more questions: What size were the dinosaurs? How did they walk? How fast did they move?

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out,” says Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 

Why? Scientists can often piece together pictures of history using evidence ancient creatures left behind.

Recommended Reading: For more about dinosaurs, see Dinotopia by James Gurney.