Story highlights Freshly uncovered footprints found on a busy Western Australian beach

Paleontologist says they may have come from four-meter long carnivore

(CNN) Everyone knows you have to watch out for sharks on Australian beaches -- but what about dinosaurs?

A 130-million year old dinosaur footprint has been found among the seaweed and surf on popular Cable Beach near the town of Broome, Western Australia.

Bindi Lee Porth told CNN she was collecting seashells when she felt an indent in the sand. Clearing it away, she found a number of massive, preserved footprints.

"I've been down there every night with tourists, kids, locals. I've been getting kids to stand in them and walk along the tracks of the dinosaurs," she said.

"It's unbelievable to stand in the tracks, close your eyes and put yourself back there in time. It's very hard to describe, it's just amazing."

Read More </s> (CNN) Everyone knows you have to watch out for sharks on Australian beaches -- but what about dinosaurs?

A 130-million year old dinosaur footprint has been found among the seaweed and surf on popular Cable Beach near the town of Broome, Western Australia.

Bindi Lee Porth said she was collecting seashells when she felt an indent in the sand. Clearing it away, she found a number of massive, preserved footprints.

"(I'm) amazed. To be connected to something from so many millions and millions of years ago is fantastic, we're pretty happy. The kids didn't believe me at first, but I was right," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Porth said she had been on the beach dozens of times before without seeing any dinosaur footprints.

One of a number of footprints found along the beach.

University of Queensland palaeontologist Steve Salisbury told CNN the tracks had probably been covered by sand or water for decades, but erratic tides at Cable Beach had finally revealed them.

He said the tracks were called Megalosaurus Broomensis and they were probably made by a medium-sized carnivore.

"It was a type of theropod dinosaur, a carnivorous one," he said. "The tracks are about 30 to 50 centimeters (1 to 1.6 feet) long so we can tell the dinosaur was probably about 1.5 meters (5 feet) high at the hips and maybe 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) long."

Dinosaur tracks have been part of Aboriginal mythology, known as Dreamtime, in the area for generations.

"This particular spot, for instance, is known to have tracks on it and is called the Place of the Emu Man," Salisbury said, referring to the three-toed tracks similar to emu footprints.

Other footprints found include those of the stegosaurus and the enormous, herbivorous brontosaurus.

According to Salisbury, the rock which holds the footprints is stronger than the layers above it, which have washed away over the years to expose the footprints to the air once again.

"As it weathers away we start to see these ancient surfaces emerge. What you're essentially seeing are surfaces that are frozen in time and were walked over by dinosaurs millions of years ago," he said. </s> Dinosaur footprints dating back to the cretaceous period have been uncovered on a beach in far-north Western Australia after being buried in sand for almost 50 years.

The three-toed tracks were found on Cable beach in Broome, 2,240km north of Perth, on Sunday, when a woman who was collecting shells with her family felt an indent beneath her foot.

“So I just sort of brushed all the sand away and it’s revealed this beautiful, like a bird, foot,” Broome woman Bindi Lee Porth told the ABC.

It’s the first time these particular tracks have been reported since 1974 but they are familiar to the Indigenous peoples of the Dampier peninsula.

To the Goolarabooloo they are the tracks of Marrala, the Emu Man, a creator spirit, whose footprints appear and disappear under shifting sands along more than 50km of coastline.

They are written into songlines that tell the dreamtime history and law of the area, which is so heavily pockmarked with fossilised footprints that it’s become known as the dinosaur coast.

Paleontologist Dr Steven Salisbury, a senior lecturer with the school of biological sciences at the University of Queensland who leads a project to map out the dinosaur footprints on the Dampier Peninsula, said these particular tracks belonged to a carnivorous theropod, bigger than a velociraptor but smaller than a Tyrannosaurus rex.

By the size of the footprints, he said, it was estimated to stand between 1.5m and 1.8m high at the hip, which, “assuming it’s a bog-standard carnivore” would make it between 3m and 4m long.

“They are unique to the Dampier Peninsula,” he said. “That sort of track only occurs here.”

The three-toed footprints are less plentiful than sauropod tracks but more recognisable, looking like every dinosaur track ever found in a cartoon.

Sauropod tracks, which belong to four-legged herbivores, “can just look like little potholes”, Salisbury said.

Salisbury said the rocks in the Dampier Peninsula were rich with footprints of sauropods, theropods, stegosaurus and other cretaceous-era dinosaurs. It’s the only area in Australia where dinosaurs of this era are recorded.

He said the density of tracks was based on a combination of the environment that existed in that area 130 million years ago that attracted the dinosaurs and the particular rock which preserved the footprints.

“It seems like the area was part of a vast river plane flowing into a delta so there were lots of species that were conducive to the preservation of dinosaur tracks,” he said.

Prints of the three-toed carnivore can be found at a number of points along the coast, most notably at Minyirr, also known as Gantheaume Point, where they are exposed in the rocks. Minyirr is also a significant place in the Marrala dreaming.

“The whole community is littered with these tracks, local Bart Pigram told Guardian Australia. “They come up every now and then and then they disappear and no one talks about them for 20 years until they pop up again.”

Pigram is a Yawuru man, one of the groups recognised as traditional owners of the area, and is also a member of the Dinosaur Coast Management Group.

He said he was concerned about the ability of Indigenous people to protect these particular tracks because Cable beach is the centre of the town’s tourist area.

“We have had issues before when people have come up and actually tried to gouge the rocks out,” he said. “This is prehistory, it must be protected.” </s> The photo above shows the partially excavated fossil skeleton of a newly discovered species of diplodocoid dinosaur in the Lingwu region of China. Dubbed Lingwulong shenqi (the Lingwu amazing dragon), the fossils are around 174 million years old.

The finds provide evidence that diplodocoid dinosaurs were distributed across the supercontinent Pangaea, according to a paper published in Nature Communications.

Sauropods were long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs and among the longest and largest land animals to have lived. It has been thought that advanced sauropods, the neosauropods, diversified during the breakup of Pangaea and had not reached East Asia before it became isolated.

Evolutionary and biogeographic analyses including the new species now suggest that neosauropods were already diverse and widespread in the Middle Jurassic (about 174 to 163 million years ago), rather than rapidly becoming dominant at the transition to the Late Jurassic (163 to 145 million years ago) as previously thought. Furthermore, major sauropod groups may have originated in the Early Jurassic. </s> The dinosaur, which roamed the Earth some 174 million years ago, has been named Lingwulong shenqi. According to the study, "Lingwu" is for the name of the region in which the fossils were discovered; "long" is Mandarin Chinese for dragon; and "shenqi" Mandarin for amazing. All together, the new dino is the "amazing dragon of Lingwu."

Although sauropods have been found globally, researchers noted that due to the fragmentation of the ancient continent Pangea, several subgroups of the species had been restricted to certain parts of the world. This had been the case for the subgroup neosauropods, to which the latest find belongs.

Paleontologists involved in the study first began to excavate four sites across northwest China in 2005, which ultimately resulted in the discovery of seven to 10 partial skeletons of the new species, ranging from juveniles to adults. Officials also noted in the study that the fossils were older than any other similar dinosaur remains by 15 million years.

Considering it's difficult to paint an exact picture of how the dinosaur might've appeared — or behaved, for that matter — officials have estimated that the new dinosaur varied anywhere from 35 to 55 feet long from head to tail and moved fairly slowly.

"Not only is it the oldest member [of this group], but it's the first ever from Asia," study author Philip Mannion told the BBC. "For a long time it was thought that neosauropods didn't get into Asia during the Jurassic."

"This suggests that firstly, [neosauropods] got in before any kind of barrier came up, but increasingly the geological evidence suggests maybe this barrier was quite ephemeral," he added.

Moving forward, researchers hope to find even more fossils to support their work. </s> Paleontologists in China discovered a new species of dinosaur that roamed the planet millions of years ago.

The fossil, found in northwestern China’s Lingwu region, was given the name of Lingwulong shenqi, which translates to “Lingwu amazing dragon.”

The discovery was announced Tuesday and may force researchers to rethink the entire lineage of the largest animals to roam the earth.

MAYBE BIGFOOT WAS A DINOSAUR, IF THESE FOSSILS ARE ANY INDICATION

Lingwulong shenqi, a member of the plant-eating dinosaurs known as sauropods, lived 174 million years ago during the Jurassic period.

The scientists excavated bones from at least eight to 10 Lingwulong individuals, the largest of which was about 57 feet long, paleontologist Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications, told Reuters.

Researchers told the wire service the discovery pushes back by 15 million years the appearance of so-called advanced sauropods, which included some of the largest land animals ever.

BABY SNAKE FROM THE TIME OF THE DINOSAURS FOUND 'FROZEN' IN AMBER

“Previously, we thought all of these advanced sauropods originated around 160 million years ago and rapidly diversified and spread across the planet in a time window perhaps as short as 5 million years,” said University College London paleontologist Paul Upchurch, a study co-author.

But the discovery of Lingwulong means that this group originated somewhat earlier and more slowly, he added.

Lingwulong lived in a warm, wet environment with lush vegetation. Its neck was shorter than some other sauropods, and it could have grazed on soft plants with its peg-like teeth.

“Our discoveries indicate that eastern Asia was still connected to other continents at the time,” Xu said. </s> Recently discovered “microfossils” in Canada are the oldest ever found on Earth and could show life on the planet more than four billion years ago, according to a new study in the journal Nature.

Scientists were not able to pinpoint the exact time frame when the fossils were formed they could be up to 4.3 billion years old but even at the lower end of the estimate, the fossils are at least 3.8 billion years old, making them “about 300 million years older” than any other fossils found to date, said Dominic Papineau, a professor at University College London who made the discovery.

The fossils are tiny, at about half the width of a human hair, and invisible to the human eye. Scientists say they came from ancient microbes that formed near warm-water vents on the ocean floor.

“Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed,” study author Matthew Dodd said. “This speedy appearance of life on Earth fits with other evidence of recently discovered 3,700 million-year-old sedimentary mounds that were shaped by microorganisms.”

Dodd noted that the discovery of life on Earth not long after the planet's formation believed to be about 4.57 billion years ago means it's possible life could have formed on other watery planets in a similarly short amount of time.

“We could expect to find evidence for past life on Mars four billion years ago,” he said.

The site where the fossils were discovered, which is known as the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt and located in northern Quebec, is also home to some of the oldest sedimentary rocks on earth.

Prior to this recent discovery, the oldest known fossil came out of Western Australia and was estimated at about 3.46 billion years old. </s> Giant long-necked dinosaurs were roaming the supercontinent of Pangaea up to 29 million years earlier than previously thought, a new study suggests.

Fossils of a newly discovered species, dubbed the 'amazing dragon of Lingwu', prove advanced diplodocoids were alive during the early Middle Jurassic of China - 174 million years ago.

Researchers previously believed that advanced diplodocoids, known as neosauropods, did not appear until after the break up of Pangaea, the giant land mass from which modern continents formed.

Sauropods were long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs and among the longest and largest land animals to have lived.

They were the first successful group of herbivorous dinosaurs, dominating land based ecosystems for more than 140 million years from the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous.

They stretched to 130 feet (40 metres) and weighed up to 80 tonnes (80,000kg / 88 tons) - 14 times the weight of an African elephant.

It has been thought that advanced sauropods, the neosauropods, diversified during the breakup of Pangaea and had not reached East Asia before it became isolated.

However, research led by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has changed our understanding of these ancient creatures.

Researchers excavated several partial skeletons of a new previously unknown species of diplodocoid dinosaur.

They found them in the Lingwu region of China, hence the name 'Lingwulong shenqi' which literally translates to the Lingwu amazing dragon.

The fossils date from around 174 million years ago, making this species the earliest known neosauropod and the first from East Asia.

As a result of this find, researchers found neosauropods were already diverse and widespread in the Middle Jurassic, about 174 to 163 million years ago.

It was previously thought they become dominant at the transition to the Late Jurassic 163 to 145 million years ago.

The findings were based on material from multiple individuals and most parts of the skeleton of an early Middle Jurassic dicraeosaurid.

'The new discovery challenges conventional biogeographical ideas, and suggests that dispersal into East Asia occurred much earlier than expected', researchers wrote in their paper published in Nature Communications.

'Moreover, the age of this new taxon indicates that many advanced sauropod lineages originated at least 15 million years earlier than previously realised, achieving a global distribution while Pangaea was still a coherent landmass'.

Researchers also believe major sauropod groups may have originated in the Early Jurassic. </s> Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest fossils — about 3.7 billion years old — which pushes back the previous record by 220 million years and captures the earliest history of our planet.

Led by the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Professor Allen Nutman, the team discovered 3.7-billion-year-old stromatolite fossils in the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks, in the Isua Greenstone Belt along the edge of Greenland’s icecap.

The discovery of the Isua stromatolite fossils provides a greater understanding of early diversity of life on Earth which researchers say could have implications for our understanding of life on Mars.

Prof. Nutman said the fossils predated the world’s previous oldest stromatolite fossils — which were found in Western Australia — by 220 million years.

The discovery pushes back the fossil record to near the start of Earth’s geological record and points to evidence of life on Earth very early in its history.

The Isua stromatolites, which were exposed by the recent melting of a perennial snow patch, were laid down in shallow sea, providing the first evidence of an environment in which early life thrived.

For much of Earth’s history, life was just single cells, and stromatolite fossils are mounds of carbonate constructed by these communities of microbes.

“The significance of stromatolites is that not only do they provide obvious evidence of ancient life that is visible with the naked eye, but that they are complex ecosystems,” Prof. Nutman said.

“This indicates that as long as 3.7 billion years ago microbial life was already diverse,” he said.

“This diversity shows that life emerged within the first few hundred millions years of Earth’s existence, which is in keeping with biologists’ calculations showing the great antiquity of life’s genetic code,” he added.

Associate Professor Vickie Bennett, from Australian National University (ANU), said this study provided a new perspective into the history of Earth.

“Rather than speculating about potential early environments, for the first time we have rocks that we know record the conditions and environments that sustained early life,” said Prof. Bennett.

“Our research will provide new insights into chemical cycles and rock—water—microbe interactions on a young planet,” she said.

Martin Van Kranendonk, from University of New South Wales (UNSW), said it was a groundbreaking find that could point to similar life structures on Mars, which 3.7 billion years ago was a damp environment.

“This discovery represents a new benchmark for the oldest preserved evidence of life on Earth. It points to a rapid emergence of life on Earth and supports the search for life in similarly ancient rocks on Mars,” Van Kranendonk said.

The study was published in the journal Nature.
A beachgoer in Australia discovers dinosaur footprints believed to be around 130 million years old while combing the shore for shells.