The footprint, determining 18.5 cm(7 inches )long, was gathered at Petrie’s Quarry(part of the Aspley Formation)in 1958 together with a piece bearing a narrow direct groove translated as a possible tail trace.

Both specimens were gotten rid of from the quarry before the website was redeveloped and have actually given that travelled through a number of university mentor collections.

“This is the only dinosaur fossil to be discovered in an Australia capital city and demonstrates how worldwide considerable discoveries can stay surprise in plain sight,” stated Dr. Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland.

“Subsequent city advancement has actually made the initial website unattainable, leaving this footprint as the only enduring dinosaur proof from the location.”

Fragmentary, the Albion footprint maintains impressions of 3 forward-pointing digits and reveals a fan-shaped summary with weak main toe supremacy, includes constant with a bipedal dinosaur.

The comprehensive 3D modeling and morphometric analysis show that the track carefully looks like the ichnogenus Evazouma kind of footprint associated somewhere else with early sauropodomorph dinosaurs.

Based upon the footprint’s measurements, Dr. Romilio and his associate, Professor Bruce Runnegar, quote that the dinosaur stood about 78 cm (31 inches) high at the hip and weighed approximately 144 kg.

Utilizing recognized scaling formulas, they determine a theoretical optimum running speed of about 60 km per hour (37 miles per hour).

No skeletal remains of dinosaurs have actually yet been discovered in the Aspley Formation, making the footprint the only direct proof of their existence at this time and location.

“It’s most likely the dinosaur was strolling through or along with a waterway when it left the footprint before it was then maintained in sandstone, which was cut countless years later on to build structures throughout Brisbane,” Dr. Romilio stated.

“Without the insight to maintain this product, Brisbane’s dinosaur history would still be totally unidentified.”

“It was a terrific example of an unique sort of trace fossil due to the fact that the footprint was made in sediment by a heavy animal,” Professor Runnegar stated.

The associated tail trace, about 13 cm (5 inches) long, follows structures in some cases translated as tail drags in dinosaur trackways, however the authors warn that, without associated footprints protected in location, it can not be with confidence credited to a dinosaur.

“While the shallow direct groove maintained on the tail block corresponds in morphology with reported tail drag traces, in the lack of any enduring manus or pes impressions and ex situ status, its identity stays unclear,” they stated.

“While such grooves are in some cases credited to tail contact in prosauropod trackways, they are normally discovered in situ and near the midline of such trackways. That is not the case here.”

The group’s paper was released today in The Alcheringa, an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology

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Anthony Romilio & & Bruce Runnegar. Earliest Australian dinosaur: ichnofossils from the Carnian Aspley Formation of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Alcheringareleased online February 1, 2026; doi: 10.1080/ 03115518.2025.2607630