240, 80 million year old dinosaur fossilised footprints discovered in Shanghang, Fujian Province

The first evidence that dinosaurs roamed East China’s Fujian has been discovered in preserved fossilised footprints.

A team of Chinese palaeontologists has identified more than 240 fossilised dinosaur footprints in east China’s Fujian Province, the first traces of dinosaur activity found there.

The scientists reported that the fossilised dinosaur tracks, a landmark discovery in the province’s dinosaur research has ended the assumption that “no dinosaurs” had ever lived there, according to the Global Times on Tuesday. 

The dinosaur track site covering an area of about 1,600 square meters, is the largest and the most diverse such site discovered in China dating back to the Upper Cretaceous period, (100.5 million years ago – 66 million years ago).

The discovery was made on November 7, 2020.

So far, more than 240 dinosaur tracks from at least eight species have been recovered from the muddy siltstone.

The 80-million-year-old tracks were left by at least eight types of dinosaurs, including sauropods, large and small theropods and ornithopods, scientists said at a news conference held in Fuzhou, the provincial capital, on Tuesday.

“Judging from the size of the footprints, which are 8 to 55 centimetres long, lengths of the dinosaurs range from 1 meter to 10 meters,” said Xing Lida, a member of the research team and associate professor at the China University of Geosciences.

It is also the first time that China discovered a large Deinonychus from the fossil site, Xing said.