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

On July 10, Ou Hongtao went to his usual restaurant in Leshan (in China’s Sichuan province) when his eyes were drawn to something unusual.

He noticed “special dents” on the ground in the restaurant’s yard that resembled dinosaur footprints.

His assumptions were quickly confirmed by a team led by Dr Lida Xing, a palaeontologist and associate professor at the China University of Geosciences.

Using a 3D scanner, he deduced that the prints were left by two brontosauruses.

These dinosaurs are thought to be among the largest land animals to have ever existed.

They were 122 feet long and an estimated 70 tonnes heavy, extending the length of three buses and weighing as much as ten African elephants.

The find was made just 5 kilometres from the Giant Buddha of Leshan, the world’s largest stone Buddha statue carved out of a red sandstone cliff.

The prints were discovered preserved in the same sediment that was used to create the statue.