100 million-year-old dinosaur footprints found at restaurant in China

Sauropods were the largest land animals to have ever roamed the earth

A diner at a restaurant in the Sichuan province of China has accidentally helped palaeontologists unearth 100 million-year-old dinosaur footprints.

The footprints were noticed by Ou Hongtao, who was eating at a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan province on July 10. He spotted several pits with "special dents" in them and speculated that they were possibly dinosaur footprints.

A team of palaeontologists led by Dr Lida Xing, associate professor at the China University of Geosciences, confirmed the findings and stated that the footprints were made by sauropods. The experts used a 3D scanner to confirm the findings.

Sauropods were the largest land animals to have ever roamed the earth. They used to have really long necks and tails and could grow up to 8 metres (26 feet) in body length.

A restaurant patron in southwest China spotted a set of footprints in the stone floor of the courtyard where they were dining. Turns out the prints were left by sauropods some 100 million years ago.https://t.co/zBu6XggyAn
— NPR (@NPR) July 24, 2022

According to Xing, they were so heavy that the ground must have shaken as they walked. He added that sauropods could grow to the length of three school buses. "This discovery is actually like a jigsaw, adding a piece of evidence to Sichuan's Cretaceous period and the diversity of dinosaurs," he told CNN.

It is not the first time that dinosaur fossils have been discovered in the region, but far fewer fossils from the Cretaceous period have been found in the region. According to experts, it was a period when "dinosaurs really flourished."

The restaurant where the footprints have been unearthed used to be a chicken farm and the prints were buried in layers and layers of dirt and sand.

The dirt was removed only last year, and the restaurant owner decided to keep the uneven stones intact as they liked their natural look. "When we went there, we found that the footprints were very deep and quite obvious, but nobody had thought about (the possibility)," added Xing.

The restaurant owner has now fenced off the site and may even build a shed to protect the footprints from erosion. The restaurant is located near the Leshan Giant Buddha, an enormous statue carved out of a cliff of red sandstone.