‘Australia’s own Jurassic Park’: palaeontologists unearth 21 different dinosaur tracks in landmark discovery

An “unprecedented” 21 different types of dinosaur tracks have been found on a stretch of Australia’s remote coastline, scientists said on Monday, dubbing it the nation’s Jurassic Park.

Palaeontologists from the University of Queensland and James Cook University said it was the most diverse such discovery in the world, unearthed in rocks up to 140 millions years old in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Steve Salisbury, lead author of a paper on the findings published in the Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology, said the tracks were “globally unparalleled”.

“It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half of the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia’s dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period,” he said. “It’s such a magical place – Australia’s own Jurassic Park, in a spectacular wilderness setting.

“Among the tracks is the only confirmed evidence for stegosaurs in Australia. There are also some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever recorded.”

It was almost lost, with the Western Australian government in 2008 selecting the area as the preferred site for a massive liquid natural gas processing precinct.

Alarmed, the region’s traditional Aboriginal custodians, the Goolarabooloo people, contacted Salisbury and his team to officially research what they knew was there. They spent more than 400 hours investigating and documenting dinosaur tracks in the Walmadany area.