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Teen discovers Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil—almost 70 years ago

Laura Baisas

created: Feb. 2, 2026, 7:37 p.m. | updated: Feb. 2, 2026, 11 p.m.

In 1958, an Australian teenager named Bruce Runnegar uncovered a mysterious dinosaur footprint during a visit to a quarry with school friends. These primitive relatives of later long-neck dinosaurs lived during the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous. Importantly, the footprint is also the oldest dinosaur fossil in Australia. “Subsequent urban development has made the original site inaccessible, leaving this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area.”Dr. Anthony Romilio used software to recreate a cast of what the dinosaur footprint would have looked like. While in the United States, he showed the fossil footprint he discovered as a teen in Brisbane to his students.

3 hours, 35 minutes ago: Popular Science