Sat, 07 Nov 2009 5:06p.m.
By Jane Luscombe
A scientist who went exploring in the South Island for oil and gas came back with a much rarer find.
Dr Greg Browne accidentally discovered the first ever dinosaur footprints in the country.
To the untrained eye it looks like a puddle in the rock, but the footprint is rarer than a Welsh win over the All Blacks .
"This is incredibly exciting," says Dr Hamish Campbell, palaeontologist. "This is the first evidence of dinosaurs that we know of for certain from the South Island."
They are also the first dinosaur footprints found anywhere in the country.
They were discovered at a secret location northwest of Nelson. It has taken 70 million years - for 50 million they lay under the ocean, covered by hundreds of metres of sediment.
Dr Browne, a geologist, stumbled across the footprints when studying rock and sediment formations for signs of oil and gas.
"We have been walking over these rocks for a century and we haven't taken the time out to study them in detail," says Dr Campbell.
Now Dr Campbell hopes government money might be found for more research.
The footprints were discovered in six areas. The largest print was around 60cm in diameter.
They were made by a sauropod – large, long-necked dinosaurs that ate trees and plants much like those growing here today.
While other parts of the world boast a healthy fossil record, very little evidence of dinosaurs has been found in New Zealand. Until now, just three locations have turned up fossils - in Hawke's Bay, Port Waikato and the Chatham Islands.
The scientists can now go back and look at other rocks of similar age in the hope of making more ancient finds.
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