The discovery was made in July by two Polish scientists, Grzegorz Pieńkowski and Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, in the village of Borkowice, in the country's central Mazowieckie province, according to the state PAP news agency.
Estimated to be some 200 million years old, the find “could represent the biggest collection of dinosaur tracks in Europe,” Niedźwiedzki told the Polish news agency.
The discovery
While pursuing a different project in the area in the summer, the two scientists one day decided to explore the Borkowice clay mine.
As they took a walk up one of the clay heaps, “within 20 minutes, we stumbled upon a huge slab with a beautifully preserved dinosaur trail,” Niedźwiecki, a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, said.
In all, the pair collected around 60 slabs, containing several hundred dinosaur footprints, the PAP news agency reported.
“My eyes bulged when I saw these specimens,” Niedźwiedzki said.
He added this could be “the tip of the iceberg,” estimating that the Borkowice mine could contain up to 500 slabs imprinted with dinosaur tracks.
The total number of footprints could reach several thousand, "making it the biggest collection of dinosaur tracks in Europe,” Niedźwiedzki told PAP.
He said some of the tracks may represent hitherto unknown species of dinosaur.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, TVP