MAY/JUNE 2017 | | 43FOSSiL FiLE John Long
In March, a landmark publication in Australian palaeontology
was published –152 page monograph in the Journal of Verte-
brate Paleontology supplement series detailing over 20 species
of different dinosaur trackways left in130-million-year-old
coastal sandstones exposed from Broome to the lower Dampier
Peninsula (http://tinyurl.com/mqansao).
Dr Steven Salisbury and his team of students at The Univer-
sity of Queensland have been working the sites since 2011 to
map and capture the footprints using a variety of modern
approaches, such as drones for accurate aerial photography of
the trackways, which are often only exposed for brief times at
low tides. The use of colour photogrammetry to bring the prints
to life in stunning 3D is a visual highlight of the work.
In all they have recognised a range of trackways belonging to
as many as 21 different dinosaurs, with six new track types
formally named. Among these are a theropod trackways
(Yangtzepus), a new sauropod track (Oobardjidama) and two
taxa belonging to thyreophorans ( Garbina , Luluichnus), a group
containing well-known ankylosaurs and stegosaurs.
The work is careful not to overstep the mark and give new
names to every different trackway. The giant sauropod track-
ways are thus represented by one new named type and five other
trackway types (A–E) plus records of additional prints that
could represent other species.
The new work builds upon the previous studies at the sites
by others, including Dr Tony Thulborn and the late Tim
Hamley, who were also based at The University of Queens-
land, and myself, who made a short investigation of the sites with
the late Paul Foulkes back in 1990. Thulborn’s paper on
sauropod tracks of the region in 1994 was the first to docu-
ment very large sauropod tracks up to 1.5 metres long. The
new research shows even larger tracks, around 1.7 metres long,
making them the largest-recorded dinosaur print known
anywhere. Such sauropods must have been gigantic
titanosaurians measuring 25–30 metres in length.
However, it is the high diversity of trackways recorded at
each of the four main sites that makes the region a world-class
scientific site, far surpassing even the richest-known dinosaur
track sites anywhere on the planet. As most of our well- known
dinosaurs were found from sites from the latter half of the Early
Cretaceous (100–125 million years ago), the new research also
fills in a huge gap telling us what kinds of dinosaurs once inhab-
ited Australia during the first quarter of the Cretaceous period
145–125 million years ago.
In recent years there was major controversy over protection
of the dinosaur tracks while plans for a major gas-processing
plant were developed to be built at one of the main trackway
sites. At the time, the scientific work on the tracks was just
underway. The gas plant plans did not go ahead, partly due to
the publicity generated by Salisbury showing how significant the
tracks were, and also by indigenous leaders who publically
proclaimed how important the track sites were to their local
heritage. The paper by Salisbury and his team not only describes
the scientific significance of the dinosaur trackways within their
geological context, but also presents a detailed account of the
history of the site’s discovery together with the local indigenous
history, stories and values embodied by the tracks.
The appendix gives a good account of the controversies over
the theft of “stegosaur” prints from the site in late 1996, which
was front page news in The Australian at the time. As a curator
at the Western Australian Museum I assisted in police inves-
tigations of the theft. Despite our fruitless searches to recover
the missing prints, outlined in my book, The Dinosaur Dealers
(2002), the mystery has now been resolved. Salisbury’s team
found that prints were not stolen, as first thought, but had been
damaged by natural weathering. They were found in pieces
near the site, and have since been glued together and returned
to their original place in the trackway.The Amazing Dinosaur Tracks of Broome
The discovery of a diverse range of dinosaur tracks fills in a huge gap that tells us what kinds
of dinosaurs once inhabited Australia during the first quarter of the Cretaceous period.
John Long is Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University, and is current
President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.Goolarabooloo Law Boss Richard Hunter (left) and Dr Steve
Salisbury examine a set of theropod tracks in the Lower
Cretaceous Broome sandstone of the Walmadany area of the
Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia. Photo: Damian Kelly