A perceptive diner has spotted dinosaur footprints in a restaurant in southwestern China, with an international research team confirming that they belonged to the sauropod—a long-necked and small-headed herbivore.
Hongtao Ou, a self-reported palaeontology buff, was having a meal at a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan, when he found evenly divided craters on the floor and speculated that they might be dinosaur footprints.
“This person noticed around a dozen regularly spaced pits in the ground in the outdoor courtyard of the Garden Restaurant in Sichuan Province,” one of the researchers from the University of Queensland, Anthony Romilio, said.
It turned out they are the 50-60 centimetres (20-24 inches) long fossilised footprints of the sauropod that lived in the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs flourished around 100 million years ago.
“This is a really exciting find because it shows that important dinosaur tracks can be found in unexpected places,” Romilio said.
A man has discovered dinosaur footprints in the courtyard of a restaurant in Sichuan Province. (Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images)
Published in Cretaceous Research, the scientists found that the pits were observed in the 1950s but were covered over by an earlier homeowner to smooth out and level the ground.
Associate Professor Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences said that new owners converted the home into a restaurant around three years ago and uncovered the pits again.
“But still nothing was thought to be unusual,” Xing said.
That was until mid-2022 when an observant diner pointed out they might be more than mere holes in the ground.
“The region has no skeletal record of dinosaurs, so these fossilised tracks provide invaluable information about the types of dinosaurs that lived in the area,” she said.
A computer-generated illustration of the ~10 metre-long sauropod. (University of Queensland)
The team estimated that the dinosaurs were about ten metres long.
“We also know the dinosaurs were taking quite short steps for such a large animal, with a walking speed of around two kilometres per hour,” Romilio said.
Romilio said the discovery highlights the importance of everyday people making valuable scientific discoveries.
“It’s a testament to the value of being curious about our surroundings and paying attention to the world around us,” he said.
“For some lucky people, discoveries can come from unlikely places—even while you’re having a bite to eat.”
A Sauropod skull recently discovered in outback Queensland, Australia, is shedding new light on ancient ecosystems and behaviours.
The skull—the first to be found in Australia—belongs to a sauropod nicknamed Ann.
The fossil has been offering a rare glimpse into the animal’s passage through a warmer Antarctica, according to paleontologists.
“The window between 100 and 95 million years ago was one of the warmest in earth’s geologically recent history, meaning that Antarctica, which was more or less where it is now, had no ice,” Stephen Poropat, lead researcher and one of the palaeontologists who found the skull, said in a release.
“Similarly, Australia, which was much further south than today, was warmer with less seasonality. In that climate, Antarctica was forested and might have been an attractive habitat or pathway for wandering sauropods.”
These dinosaurs are thought to be among the most successful dinosaurs to have ever existed, flourishing right until the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.
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