What did Emma Nicholls find at the Dewars Farm dinosaur trackway site?

Emma Nicholls co-led three years of excavation at Dewars Farm in Oxfordshire, which together with Ardley forms one of the largest dinosaur trackway sites in the world, digging there in the 200th anniversary year of Megalosaurus. One Megalosaurus trackway crosses a Cetiosaurus trackway after it: the predator's heel crushed the sauropod's mud rim. Just before the crossing, the Cetiosaurus put its front left foot down out of sequence, which Nicholls reads as possibly glancing over its shoulder.

• The excavation was led with Duncan Murdoch of Oxford and Kirsty Edgar and Richard Butler of Birmingham.
• The main Cetiosaurus trackway was exposed for 150 metres in one go.

▸In their words

“if you have a nine-metre predator following you, I would be looking over my shoulder as well.” Emma Nicholls · at 48:58 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-11-05). Read the whole episode summary →

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