Dinosaur Footprints in Charlbury

Sun 24 Aug 2008, 14:29

i took a stone from saj quarry charlbury in 1967 to school.it was about two foot round and i could not lift it.so i pulled it tied to a piece of rope to the primary school where it was on display in the library and i never saw it again. it had an imprint on it of a snail like fossil over a foot in diameter.

Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:53

All the rocks exposed around Charlbury are of Jurassic age, dinosaurs were still around, even though a large amount were extinct by the beginning of the Jurassic.
Layed down in the shallow sea which covered this area, the limestone rocks are likely to have recorded the footprints of a dinosaur as he was paddling around.

Sat 16 Aug 2008, 22:40

Is the rock strata that young? I thought it predated such beasties. One of the books on Charlbury history has a detailed geological appendix at the back running to many pages which should date the strata. Anyone know which one, and could look up dates layers were laid down?

It would be wonderful if there were some big beastie prints in a "dinosaur" era stratum! See if you can contact the British or Oxfordshire Geology and Archaeology services immediately if you are at all suspicious these could be the real thing! Better safe than sorry and don't worry about making a fool of yourself if it turns out to be a freak marking in the rock! I believe someone has a hotline for "emergency" archeological finds so they can slap orders down on it toot de sweet. Mark may know of this. Another site few years back was protected overnight by some legal notification mechanism,somewhere up north if my memory serves me right, and its not uncommon in urban redevelopments for ancient remains to have projects stopped dead in their, err, tracks.

We don't want them going, if they are footprints, the same way as Ardley's (buried under rubbish landfill) nor the rapacious commons-thieving "landowners" quickly sending in a digger to destroy them in case it spikes their plan for monetary engorgement at our collective expense. So can you locate them precisely, take some photos, get witnesses, and get in touch with some authority soonest. I'm sure I remember the story of the incident I mentioned being that there was some near instant preservation injunction could be put onto a find whilst it was checked out, unless my memory is at fault and it was not in England... hmmm, trouble with internet information, it all begins to fog over where and when one saw a snippet, a grey goo of digital data munging the mind...

Sat 16 Aug 2008, 21:02

Please, please let these be genuine dinosaur footprints and particularly of a particularly rare one! Anything to Save Our Quarry (as Edward mentioned see separate thread on the Quarry). Em your son may well find that he is now unable to access said quarry to locate any more fossils and dinosaur footprints.

Thu 14 Aug 2008, 12:21

Did anyone ever manage to get hold of the material (and map?) that Christine mentioned? I've never seen any dinosaur footprints at the quarry myself, and so can't be sure that they exist - but if they do, I hope that any future development will pay proper regard to them, and to the important environmental features of the site mentioned by Clare MacPherson in a separate thread.

Thu 3 May 2007, 13:05

The last people to run the Charlbury YHA used to do trips to see these & other fossils in the quarry, and produced some literature & (I think) plans. They were suggesting that the quarry be made a geological park. Somebody local should still have a copy. Unfortunately I don't. It must have been around 1999.

Thu 3 May 2007, 12:01

I don't know about these but would very much like to see them if you would be prepared to show me the place. I am a geologist by profession so am naturally interested in such things! My email address is mark@phoenixdatasolutions.com

Thu 3 May 2007, 09:58

Yesterday my son was exploring at the quarry behind The Green and he found, what looks like, some three-toed dinosaur footprints. We are researching dinosaurs as a project at the moment so he is absolutely delighted to stumble across these by chance. We knew about the footprints at Ardley and the fossils at Stonesfield but we didn't know about these ones, assuming they were made by a dinosaur, in Charlbury. Does anyone know anything about them?