Brisbane’s only known dinosaur fossil is also Australia’s oldest, dating back about 230 million years to the earliest part of the Late Triassic period.
New research from the University of Queensland (UQ) and published in the journal Alcheringa has confirmed the 18.5cm footprint was discovered in 1958 by a teenager at Petrie’s Quarry at Albion, in Brisbane’s inner north, but sat unstudied for more than six decades.
UQ Evolutionary Biologist Dr Anthony Romilio, from UQ’s Dinosaur Lab, said the footprint provided evidence that dinosaurs were present in Australia earlier than previously recognised.
“This is the only dinosaur fossil to be found in an Australian capital city and shows how globally significant discoveries can remain hidden in plain sight,” Dr Romilio said.
“Subsequent urban development has made the original site inaccessible, leaving this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area.
“It’s likely the dinosaur was walking through or alongside a waterway when it left the footprint before it was then preserved in sandstone, which was cut millions of years later to construct buildings across Brisbane.
“Without the foresight to preserve this material, Brisbane’s dinosaur history would still be completely unknown.”
Researchers determined the footprint was made by a small, two-legged dinosaur, likely an early sauropodomorph, a primitive relative of later long-necked dinosaurs.
Dr Romilio said the animal would have stood about 75-80cm tall, to the height of an average human’s hip and would have weighed approximately 140 kilograms.
The fossil was collected by study co-author and UQ Honorary Professor Bruce Runnegar, who was a teenager at the time of the discovery and has kept the specimen since.
“At the time, we suspected the marks might be dinosaur tracks, but we couldn’t have imagined their national significance,” Professor Runnegar said.
Professor Runnegar later completed a Bachelor of Science and PhD at UQ and went on to teach palaeontology at the University of New England in Armidale and the University of California in Los Angeles. He showed the Brisbane fossil to students during his academic career but never embarked on a full and comprehensive evaluation and study of it.
“It was a great example of a special kind of trace fossil because the footprint was made in sediment by a heavy animal,” he said.
“When I saw Dr Romilio’s ability to reconstruct, analyse and map dinosaur footprints, I decided to reach out to have the fossil formally documented.
“More than 60 years after we found it, it’s extraordinary to see it recognised as Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil.”
The fossil is now housed at the Queensland Museum, where it will be available for ongoing research.