{"id":452296,"date":"2026-02-01T20:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/452296\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T20:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:56:12","slug":"fossilised-dinosaur-footprint-identified-after-more-than-60-years-in-palaeontologists-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/452296\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossilised dinosaur footprint identified after more than 60 years in palaeontologist’s collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before bitumen was laid and suburban homes were built in the Brisbane suburb of Albion, a vast quarry of sandstone rocks posed ripe for exploration.<\/p>\n

It was a site that esteemed palaeontologist Bruce Runnegar first visited as a young boy with his grandfather to search for plant fossils, and where, in 1958, he unearthed a piece of history believed to be about 230 million years old.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Petrie’s Quarry at Albion where Professor Runeggar discovered the fossil. (Supplied: Patrick J Conaghan)<\/p>\n

“When I went to the Brisbane Grammar School for high school, my friends and I ended up collecting this fossil after school sometime during the senior year,” Professor Runnegar said.<\/p>\n

The fossilised dinosaur footprint lived in the professor’s personal collection for more than six decades, as he showed the fossil to students he taught across the world.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Bruce Runnegar first visited the site with his grandfather as a young boy to search for plant fossils. (ABC News: Lucy Loram)<\/p>\n

“I’ve always tried to carry around a lot of large, excellent fossils I can use in my teaching,” Professor Runnegar said.<\/p>\n

In 2021, he contacted palaeontologist Anthony Romilio from the University of Queensland’s dinosaur lab to verify the identified specimen.<\/p>\n

“Learning that Bruce had collected this specimen in his teenage years, and then took it with him during his career \u2014 lecturing, showing it to students as part of their education overseas and back here again \u2026 I wasn’t surprised he has held onto it so long” Dr Romilio said.<\/p>\n

Identifying the dinosaur<\/p>\n

Dr Romilio used software to create a 3D map of the fossil and rendered a version of what the dinosaur would have looked like.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the features for this particular specimen I could tell, OK we have the real thing. So, I was quite excited about this.”<\/p>\n

\"\u00a0This\"University University of Queensland Palaeontologist Anthony Romilio created a 3D map of the fossil.\u00a0 \/ \u00a0This helped determine what kind of dinosaur the footprint belonged to.<\/p>\n

Professor Runnegar and Dr Romilio have determined the footprint came from a type of dinosaur called a sauropodomorph, in a journal released today.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople might recall the types of dinosaurs with a very long neck, like a brachiosaurus, but this is actually a long time before those dinosaurs, so it was made by an ancestral form,\u201d Dr Romilio said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did have a long neck, but it certainly wasn\u2019t as grand as these brachiosauruses, and it also walked on its two hind legs, so it was bi-pedal.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A digital recreation of sauropodomorph dinosaurs. (Supplied: University of Queensland)<\/p>\n

The paper concluded that the dinosaur that left its mark on Brisbane would have weighed around 144 kilograms and ran at maximum speeds of 60 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n

It lived in the Carnian period, some 230 million years ago, which Dr Romilio said could make it the oldest known trace fossil in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in the time period of the early [to] late Triassic, that is a point in Australia\u2019s geological history where we have no dinosaurs\u2019 fossils that old,\u201d Dr Romilio said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a puzzle piece that is so remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

A comparison of the sauropodomorph to an adult human. (Supplied: University of Queensland)<\/p>\n

‘Still a lot of unknown’<\/p>\n

Last year, Professor Runnegar donated the fossil to the Queensland Museum where it will be added to the University of Queensland’s collection to be used for research and education.<\/p>\n

“Particularly with dinosaurs in Queensland, there’s still a lot that’s unknown,” said Kristen Spring, the Senior Collection Manager of Geosciences at the Queensland Museum.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite a new era of dinosaur research, in the last 30 years or so \u2014 so any new addition to the dinosaurs of Queensland is very exciting.<\/p>\n

“Learning about dinosaurs looks at past climates, past environments. Which then can help us shape and consider where future environments might be going”.<\/p>\n

Loading…’More to be discovered’<\/p>\n

Now 85, Professor Runnegar reflected on his pathway to palaeontology and geology that almost didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

“We had someone who came and offered career advice to final year primary school students, and one of the careers they talked about was a geologist,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Professor Runnegar used the fossil in his teaching over the years. (ABC News: Liz Pickering)<\/p>\n

“I remember very well that the criteria needed to be a geologist was a robust physique and a love of the outdoors, neither of which I had.<\/p>\n

“So, I wrote that career off almost immediately \u2026 although I finished up being a geologist.”<\/p>\n

While the quarry site where he found the footprint has long been developed over, Professor Runnegar said he believed there were more fossils hiding around Brisbane.<\/p>\n

“There’s undoubtedly more to be discovered.”<\/p>\n

Dr Romilio said sandstone buildings across the capital city, like the General Post Office in the heart of the CBD, were made of the same material where Professor Runnegar uncovered the fossil.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Professor Runeggar brought the fossil to University of Queensland palaeontologist Anthony Romilio. (ABC News: Lucy Loram)<\/p>\n

“I see in cross-sections where we’ve got different layers of sand, that maybe if there’s a little bit of a quirk or it looks like it dips here and there \u2026 is that a dinosaur footprint?” he said.<\/p>\n

“It is always a point of curiosity to me that this wonderful building may have much more, that could even satisfy a palaeontologist like myself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before bitumen was laid and suburban homes were built in the Brisbane suburb of Albion, a vast quarry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[233623,64,63,651,25073,25795,25455,21815,18331,94,75343,701,233624,128,67288],"class_list":["post-452296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-albion","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brisbane","tag-dinosaur","tag-footprint","tag-fossil","tag-museum","tag-palaeontology","tag-qld","tag-quarry","tag-queensland","tag-sauropodomorph","tag-science","tag-university-of-queensland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}