A footprint unearthed by a teenage fossil hunter at Albion in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in 1958 has now been formally identified as the continent’s earliest confirmed dinosaur trace, dating back some 230 million years (Late Triassic epoch) and suggesting dinosaurs roamed what is now Brisbane far earlier than paleontologists realized.
Ichnofossils from Petrie’s Quarry at Albion in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Image credit: Anthony Romilio & Bruce Runnegar, doi: 10.1080/03115518.2025.2607630.
The footprint, measuring 18.5 cm (7 inches) long, was collected at Petrie’s Quarry (part of the Aspley Formation) in 1958 along with a slab bearing a narrow linear groove interpreted as a possible tail trace.
Both specimens were removed from the quarry before the site was redeveloped and have since passed through several university teaching collections.
“This is the only dinosaur fossil to be found in an Australia capital city and shows how globally significant discoveries can remain hidden in plain sight,” said Dr. Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland.
“Subsequent urban development has made the original site inaccessible, leaving this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area.”
Although fragmentary, the Albion footprint preserves impressions of three forward-pointing digits and shows a fan-shaped outline with weak central toe dominance, features consistent with a bipedal dinosaur.
The detailed 3D modeling and morphometric analysis indicate that the track closely resembles the ichnogenus Evazoum, a type of footprint associated elsewhere with early sauropodomorph dinosaurs.
Based on the footprint’s dimensions, Dr. Romilio and his colleague, Professor Bruce Runnegar, estimate that the dinosaur stood about 78 cm (31 inches) high at the hip and weighed roughly 144 km (89 miles).
Using established scaling equations, they calculate a theoretical maximum running speed of about 60 km per hour (37 mph).
No skeletal remains of dinosaurs have yet been found in the Aspley Formation, making the footprint the only direct evidence of their presence at this time and place.
“It’s likely the dinosaur was walking through or alongside a waterway when it left the footprint before it was then preserved in sandstone, which was cut millions of years later to construct buildings across Brisbane,” Dr. Romilio said.
“Without the foresight to preserve this material, Brisbane’s dinosaur history would still be completely unknown.”
“It was a great example of a special kind of trace fossil because the footprint was made in sediment by a heavy animal,” Professor Runnegar said.
The associated tail trace, about 13 cm (5 inches) long, is consistent with structures sometimes interpreted as tail drags in dinosaur trackways, but the authors caution that, without associated footprints preserved in place, it cannot be confidently attributed to a dinosaur.
“While the shallow linear groove preserved on the tail block is consistent in morphology with reported tail drag traces, in the absence of any surviving manus or pes impressions and ex situ status, its identity remains ambiguous,” they said.
“While such grooves are sometimes attributed to tail contact in prosauropod trackways, they are typically found in situ and near the midline of such trackways. That is not the case here.”
The team’s paper was published this week 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. Alcheringa, published online February 1, 2026; doi: 10.1080/03115518.2025.2607630
