Author: Margherita Bassi

During the early Jurassic period around 200 million years ago, Earth’s animals finally rebounded from one of the worst extinction events in the planet’s history. While paleontologists in Australia have not discovered any fossilized dinosaur bones from this period, these dinosaurs nevertheless made their bygone presence known. Researchers have discovered the greatest concentration of dinosaur footprints per square meter (10.7-square-feet) in Australia known to science. Unbeknownst to paleontologists, the slab of rock had been sitting in a high school for decades. Their study, published March 20 in the journal Historical Biology, details this and other early Jurassic dinosaur footprints hiding…