Many grey nomads feel like pioneering explorers as they leave the cities in the rear view mirror and head into the red dust landscape of their future. However, this sense of uniqueness is often blunted by the realisation that they are actually on a well-worn trail and that the magical ‘secret’ camping spot they discovered last week is well known among the Happy Hour fraternity.
But all the frustrated Burke and Wills out there who can’t help feeling that everything there is to discover has already been discovered should take heart from the news out of Western Australia this week.
A woman collecting shells on the most popular part of Broome’s iconic Cable Beach has uncovered footprints of a Tyrannosaurus-type dinosaur … and the scientific community has gone into excitement overload.
Bindi Lee Porth was walking on the main tourist area directly in front of resorts where kids play and people sunbathe every day when something amazing happened.
“I went to put my foot down, and the best way that I could describe it is that I felt a very strong energy,” she told the ABC. “So I just sort off brushed all the sand away and it’s revealed this beautiful, like a bird, foot.”
Ms Porth said she could not believe what she had found, and said to her daughter: “Imagine if this was actual real dinosaur prints and we’ve just found them and we’re now standing on something that was here millions and millions of years ago.” Palaeontologist Dr Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland has been leading a study of dinosaur footprints along the Broome coastline and is impressed with the latest find.
“This is a very exciting development; having someone beachcombing to come along tracks like this, this is what makes the Broome area and the dinosaur coast so special,” he told the ABC. “A lot of the time, much of that rock is covered in sand, and Cable Beach is one of those areas where there’s obviously a lot of sand.”
He said the tracks were made by carnivorous theropod dinosaurs which were not as big as the most famous theropod, Tyrannosaurus rex.
The Broome coastline is famed for its dinosaur footprints which stretch from Roebuck Bay in the south and over 150 kilometres north along the Dampier Peninsula. * What’s the most exciting thing you have ‘discovered’ on your Big Lap exploration?
