Scientists have discovered the footprints of a 5-metre-long carnivorous dinosaur, casting doubt on what was previously known about the species’ size range. The tracks were found in southeastern China’s Fujian province, among them paleontologist Dr. of the University of Queensland Dinosaur Laboratory, who conducted a detailed analysis. It was found by an international team of researchers, including Anthony Romilio.

“When people think of predatory dinosaurs, they most likely think of the muscular, human-sized aggressive predators from the Jurassic Park movies,” Dr Romilio said.

“But these tracks were left by a much slimmer and smarter group of velociraptors known as Troodontids, which appeared at the end of the Jurassic period about 95 million years ago. “This predator had a length of about 5 meters and a leg length of 1.8 metres; “This significantly exceeded the size of the predators depicted in Jurassic Park.”

— Imagine something like this coming at you at full speed!

The tracks were discovered in 2020 by a research team led by Associate Professor Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences, who decided to investigate known dinosaur tracks in Fujian Province. Many dinosaur footprints have been discovered, including two-toed footprints typical of carnivorous dinosaurs. Dr Romilio said the tracks were compared to other known bipedal dinosaur tracks from Asia, North and South America and Europe.

“We found that this type of caterpillar has a distinct shape that makes it unique,” ​​he said.

“The concept of massive troodonts has only recently emerged in the paleontological community. “The bones found in Alaska suggest a trend towards gigantism near the ancient Arctic Circle, a region with potentially less competition for the species due to prolonged winter darkness.

“But our findings suggest that these carnivorous giants migrated much further south and dispersed further.” Interestingly, some of our research team also studied the world’s smallest dinosaur footprints, footprints of predators in South Korea that are just one centimeter long.

“It shows the incredible size range of carnivorous dinosaurs, highlighting their adaptability and ecological diversity.”

The type of footprint was named Fujianipu after the province where the footprints were found.