Dinosaur footprints in record books

PARIS: French Researchers today said they had uncovered the biggest dinosaur footprints in the world, left by giant sauropods that may have weighed 40 tonnes or more.

An extraordinary track of footprints was found in April this year in the Jura plateau at Plagne, near the southeastern city of Lyon, by a pair of amateur fossil-hunters, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a press release.

Professional palaeontologists have since authenticated the find. “According to the researchers’ preliminary inspections, the footprints appear to be the biggest seen so far,” the CNRS said. “The tracks formed by the footprints extend over dozens, even hundreds, of meters (yards). Further digs will be carried out in the coming years and they may reveal that the site at Plagne is one of the biggest of its kind in the world.” The footprints entail circular depressions in chalky sediment that has been dated to the Upper Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago.