A Moment of Terror in Stone
About 95 million years ago, a flat, muddy lakeside in ancient Queensland was the scene of sudden panic. Over a space the size of a basketball court, more than 3,300 fossilized footprints record the chaotic movements of a herd of small dinosaurs. The tracksite, part of the Winton Formation sandstone, holds the only known fossil evidence of a dinosaur stampede in the world. The scene features at least 150 small, two-legged dinosaurs, including chicken-sized coelurosaurs and larger, emu-sized ornithopods. The density of the prints is exceptionally high, with an average of 16.36 footprints per square meter on the main exposed surface.
The footprints belong to two main ichnotaxa (a classification based on trace fossils): Wintonopus, made by small plant-eating ornithopods, and Skartopus, attributed to small carnivorous coelurosaurs. These creatures were gathered at the water's edge when a much larger dinosaur appeared, triggering a frantic escape. The event was preserved when the mud tracks were buried by sand and other sediments as water levels rose and fell, eventually turning to stone over millions of years. The entire fossil surface is now protected from weathering by a large, climate-controlled conservation building erected in 2002.