Strange ‘pits’ in front of a Chinese restaurant were discovered as footprints of 100 million year old dinosaurs (Photo: L Xing)

If you saw these dimples in the floor of your local restaurant, would you think they are dinosaur footprints?

Well, a dinner at the Garden Restaurant in Sichuan province, China, suspected something was amiss — and helped reveal an extraordinary array of sauropod tracks.

“They appear to be the 50-60 cm fossilized footprints of the long-necked sauropod dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period,” says Dr. Anthony Romilio of the Dinosaur Lab at the University of Queensland.

“This is a really exciting find because it shows that important dinosaur tracks can be found in unexpected places.”

Absolutely unexpected. The tracks were originally discovered in the 1950s, but at the time the building was a residence, so the owner covered them to level the ground. When it reopened as a restaurant, the ‘pits’ were rediscovered.

“But nothing has been considered unusual yet,” says Associate Professor Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences. In mid-2022, an observant resident suggested it could be more than just holes in the ground.

“The footprints went unnoticed for so long, but once you know what they are, it’s hard not to see them.

The footprints were covered in the 1950s (Photo: L Xing)

“There are no records of dinosaur skeletons in this region, so these fossilized tracks provide valuable information about the types of dinosaurs that lived in the area.”

Judging by the tracks, the sauropods are estimated to be about 10 meters long.

“We compared the size of the footprints to complete fossil skeletons,” says Dr. Romilio. “We also know that the dinosaurs, with a walking speed of about two kilometers per hour, took rather small steps for such a large animal.”

Although sauropods were much larger than a human, they walked much slower

Although sauropods are much bigger than a human, they walked much slower (Photo: Anthony Romilio)

And, as Dr. Romilio points out, the discovery of the eating dinosaur underscores the importance of ordinary people making valuable contributions to science.

“It’s a testament to the importance of being curious about our surroundings and paying attention to the world around us,” he says.

“For some lucky people, discoveries can come from unlikely places — even while you’re eating.”

The study is published in Cretaceous Research.