The longest dinosaur trackway in Europe made by an individual sauropod dinosaur has been uncovered during further excavations at Oxfordshire's dinosaur highway .
The new discovery follows the success of an excavation in summer 2024 at Dewars Farm quarry near Bicester, which featured on BBC Two's Digging For Britain . This revealed hundreds of dinosaur footprints dating back to the Middle Jurassic Period (around 166 million years ago), from both the 9 metre carnivore Megalosaurus, and enormous herbivorous dinosaurs up to twice that size.
Through these excavations and analyses, we are building a more and more complete picture of what Oxfordshire was like when dinosaurs roamed here 166 million years ago.
Dr Duncan Murdock , Oxford University Museum of Natural History
During summer 2025, a team of researchers co-led by Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) and University of Birmingham returned to the site to carry out further work. The week-long dig resulted in hundreds more individual prints from four trackways being identified and documented, each made by sauropod dinosaurs: large, long-necked herbivores such as Cetiosaurus. These trackways included Europe's longest sauropod dinosaur trackway at some 220 metres from the first to the last exposed footprint.
Dr Duncan Murdock , Earth Scientist at OUMNH, said: 'What is most exciting about this site is the sheer size and number of footprints. We now have evidence of tens of individuals moving through this area at around the same time, perhaps as a herd.'
The 2025 Dewars Farm trackway site, drone photography. Credit: Richard Butler, University of Birmingham.As in 2024, a team of more than 100 people worked at the site, including collaborators from Liverpool John Moores University and volunteer staff / students from all three universities. Over seven days, the group battled against a much drier, harder surface than the previous year focusing on a set of around 80 very large (up to 1m long) sauropod prints, that ran approximately north-south across the entire site.
Part of a crocodile jaw found at the site. Credit: Emma Nicholls.Dr Murdock added: 'The hot and dry weather baked the surface like concrete in places, so we weren't able to fully excavate every footprint.'
In addition to the largest sauropod trackway, three others were uncovered, one of which is a continuation of prints first found in 2022. Although not continuously exposed, it may prove to be an even longer trackway once all the data is pieced together. Smaller finds included marine invertebrates, plant material and a crocodile jaw. New for 2025, systematic sampling of the sediments that both underlie and fill the prints was undertaken, the analysis of which is underway.
More of the footprint surface is likely to be exposed over the coming years, and a full description of the significance, new scientific discoveries and potential for future preservation of the site is expected soon.
The excavation was made possible through the continued collaboration with the quarry operators Smiths Bletchington, Dewars Farm and Duns Tew Quarry Manager Mark Stanway, and his staff.
You can find out more about the excavation in this new in-depth BBC feature: ' In the footsteps of giants .'
Left: Members of the 2025 excavation team. Right: One of the sauropod trackways. Credit: Emma Nicholls. 
