Dinosaur footprints in China hint at giant raptors that defy Jurassic Park depictions

Fossilised footprints in Fujian province point to new type of dinosaur, dubbed Fujianipus, that is among biggest known raptors at five metres (16 feet) long

Researchers say they were far larger than the human-sized ‘aggressive hunters’ shown in blockbuster films

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Giant raptors such as the Fujianipus yingliangi might have surpassed similar dinosaurs in size as they shifted to eating larger prey and began “invading niches further up the food chain”, according to researchers. Photo: iScience

Published: 11:00pm, 1 May 2024Updated: 12:04am, 2 May 2024

Fossilised dinosaur footprints found in southeast China suggest that a group of birdlike raptors might have evolved to be bigger than previously believed, defying portrayals in popular culture such as the Jurassic Park films.

Two-toed dinosaur tracks measuring around 36cm (14 inches) in length were found at a site in southeast China’s Fujian province and might have belonged to a new group of raptor dinosaurs in the troodontid clade that were about five metres (16 feet) long.

“Standing an estimated 1.8 metres (6 feet) at the hip, Fujianipus is among the largest known raptors,” the international team from China, Australia and the United States wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal iScience last week.

Chinese scientists discovered the two-toed dinosaur tracks in 2020 in Fujian province at what has been named the Longxiang tracksite, which dates back around 85 to 100 million years. Photo: iScience

Troodontids are a family of birdlike raptors belonging to the deinonychosaurus clade found during the Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous period, or around 160 million to 65 million years ago.

Most deinonychosaurs were relatively small, with “a majority of genera estimated to measure under three metres in total length”, according to the paper.

“When people think of raptor dinosaurs, they most likely think of those in Jurassic Park movies – human-sized, muscly, aggressive hunters,” said Anthony Romilio, study author and palaeontologist at the University of Queensland Dinosaur Lab.

But the tracks discovered in China were left by troodontids, “a much slimmer and brainier group in the Velociraptor family”, Romilio said in a university statement.

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