Beachgoer stumbles upon 130 million-year-old dinosaur footprints

Beachgoer in Australia finds 130-million year old dinosaur footprint.

(Image credit: Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

last updated 7 September 2016

Beachgoer Bindi Lee Porth found much more than the seashells she was searching for on a recent trip to Western Australia's Cable Beach. While scouring the sand for shells, Porth said she spotted numerous massive footprints. The prints, later verified by experts, turned out to be from a Megalosaurus Broomensis, a carnivorous dinosaur that roamed the Earth some 130 million years ago.

"It was a type of theropod dinosaur, a carnivorous one," University of Queensland paleontologist Steve Salisbury told CNN. "The tracks are about 30 to 50 centimeters (1 to 1.6 feet) long so we can tell the dinosaur was probably about 1.5 meters (5 feet) high at the hips and maybe 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 13 feet) long." Salisbury said the tracks had probably been hidden by sand or water for years, but were finally revealed by Cable Beach's "erratic tides."

"The kids didn't believe me at first," Porth said, "but I was right."