An "exceptional" collection of the biggest dinosaur footprints ever recorded has been found by two amateur enthusiasts on an expedition near France's Jura mountains, palaeontologists said today. Imprints measuring up to 2 metres (6ft 6in) in diameter and stretching over a vast area of land have been uncovered near the village of Plagne, 30 miles west of Geneva, according to the National Centre of Scientific Research. In a statement, the centre said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated. "According to the researchers' initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen," it said. Pierre Hantzpergue, a palaeontologist at the University of Lyon who verified the prints with a colleague at the research centre, said the perfectly preserved tracks could make Plagne one of the most significant dinosaur locations in the world. "What is remarkable about this site ... is firstly the sheer size of the footprints. They are really enormous," he said. "This is new. Some very big footprints have been found in the US but I don't think they are as big as these."
Imprints measuring up to 2 metres (6ft 6in) in diameter and stretching over a vast area of land have been uncovered near the village of Plagne, 30 miles west of Geneva, according to the National Centre of Scientific Research.
In a statement, the centre said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated. "According to the researchers' initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen," it said.
Pierre Hantzpergue, a palaeontologist at the University of Lyon who verified the prints with a colleague at the research centre, said the perfectly preserved tracks could make Plagne one of the most significant dinosaur locations in the world.
"What is remarkable about this site ... is firstly the sheer size of the footprints. They are really enormous," he said. "This is new. Some very big footprints have been found in the US but I don't think they are as big as these."
Some very big footprints have been found in the US but I don't think they are as big as these."
We're number one! We're number one!
Oh, by the way, it's very close to Lyon. Do you think they are still around? "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
Do you think they are still around?
Well I'm guessing so unless some paleontologist or vandal removed them with dynomite. Here's the picture that ran with the story.
Marié-Hèlene Marcaud and Patrice Landry next to a sauropoda dinosaur footprint discovered in Pagne, north of Lyon, France. Photograph: Hubert Raguet/CNRS
I would have hiked right over these and 'hey big sauropod footprints!' would not have crossed my mind.
Patrice Landry (R) and Marie-Helene Marcaud, discoverers and members of an amateur science society specialising in geology and paleontology, pose next to well-preserved footprints, between 1.5 and two metres in diameter, in Plagne eastern France October 6, 2009.
Still, these were found by skilled amateurs and not some random person walking around. I think they well deserve the attention they're getting.
Is that whole area they're standing in a footprint?
Geology ain´t hard. :)
However, the thing that really and finally and definitely determined Noah to stop with enough species for purely business purposes and let the rest become extinct, was an incident of the last days: an excited stranger arrived with some most alarming news. He said he had been camping among some mountains and valleys about six hundred miles away, and he had seen a wonderful thing there: he stood upon a precipice overlooking a wide valley, and up the valley he was a billowy black sea of strange animal life coming. Presently the creatures passed by, struggling, fighting, scrambling, screeching, snorting -- horrible vast masses of tumultuous flesh! Sloths as big as an elephant; frogs as big as a cow; a megatherium and his harem huge beyond belief; saurians and saurians and saurians, group after group, family after family, species after species -- a hundred feet long, thirty feet high, and twice as quarrelsome; one of them hit a perfectly blameless Durham bull a thump with its tail and sent it whizzing three hundred feet into the air and it fell at the man's feet with a sigh and was no more. The man said that these prodigious animals had heard about the Ark and were coming. Coming to get saved from the flood. And not coming in pairs, they were all coming: they did not know the passengers were restricted to pairs, the man said, and wouldn't care a rap for the regulations, anyway -- they would sail in that Ark or know the reason why. The man said the Ark would not hold the half of them; and moreover they were coming hungry, and would eat up everything there was, including the menagerie and the family. All these facts were suppressed, in the Biblical account. You find not a hint of them there. The whole thing is hushed up. Not even the names of those vast creatures are mentioned. It shows you that when people have left a reproachful vacancy in a contract they can be as shady about it in Bibles as elsewhere. Those powerful animals would be of inestimable value to man now, when transportation is so hard pressed and expensive, but they are all lost to him. All lost, and by Noah's fault. They all got drowned. Some of them as much as eight million years ago.
All these facts were suppressed, in the Biblical account. You find not a hint of them there. The whole thing is hushed up. Not even the names of those vast creatures are mentioned. It shows you that when people have left a reproachful vacancy in a contract they can be as shady about it in Bibles as elsewhere. Those powerful animals would be of inestimable value to man now, when transportation is so hard pressed and expensive, but they are all lost to him. All lost, and by Noah's fault. They all got drowned. Some of them as much as eight million years ago.
