The mystery of the fossilized footprints on a cave ceiling in Australia has finally been solved.
Uncovered in the 1950s, dinosaur tracks in the Fireclay Caverns at Mount Morgan helped geologist Ross Staines discover how the reptiles walked and which species once inhabited the region.
But they also asked a lot of questions: Primarily, were dinosaurs dancing on the ceiling, Lionel Richie-style?
More than half a century later, we have some answers—thanks to a chance encounter between a paleontologist and a geologist’s daughter.
Dinosaur trackways on the cave ceiling at Mount Morgan, c. 1954 (via University of Queensland)
“I’m sure Anthony [Romilio, University of Queensland scientist] didn’t believe me until I mentioned my father’s name—Ross Staines,” Roslyn Dick, a local dentist, said of the meeting.
“Our father was a geologist and reported on the Mount Morgan caves containing the dinosaur tracks in 1954,” she explained. “Besides his published account, he had high-resolution photographs and detailed notebooks, and my sisters and I had kept it all.
“We even have his dinosaur footprint plaster cast stored under my sister’s Harry Potter cupboard in Sydney.”
That very cupboard is where Romilio found the pieces to a decades-old puzzle.
Digital recreation of one of the prints captured by Ross Staines (via University of Queensland)
The wealth and condition of “dinosaur information” archived by Dick and her sisters Heather Skinner and Janice Millar was “amazing,” according to the University.
Romilio digitized the analog photos and made a virtual 3D model of the dinosaur footprint, available to view online. All original materials were left in the family’s care.
“In combination with our current understanding of dinosaurs, it told a pretty clear-cut story,” he said.
A team of UQ scientists concluded that all five tracks found in the Mount Morgan caves were foot impressions, not handprints.
A reconstruction of the 200-million-year-old dinosaur track-maker from Mount Morgan (via Anthony Romilio/University of Queensland)
Plus, the splayed toes and moderately long middle digits suggested those of two-legged herbivorous animals.
“It seems as though we got two dinosaurs for the price of one,” Romilio said, describing a pair of plant-eaters that walked bipedally along the shore of an ancient lake.
“The tracks lining the cave ceiling were not made by dinosaurs hanging upside-down,” he continued. “Instead, the dinosaurs walked on the lake sediment and these imprints were covered in sand.”
When the softer lake sediment eroded, it left harder sandstone in-fills—i.e. footprints on the ceiling.
Romilio & Co.’s research was published last week in the journal Historical Biology.
More on Geek.com:
- Scientists Uncover New Evidence of Asteroid That Killed Dinosaurs
- New Dinosaur Discovered After Laying ‘Misidentified’ in Vault for 30 Years
- Massive, 1,100-Pound Dinosaur Bone Unearthed in France
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