Despite being found over 60 years ago, Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil has been identified having been initially discovered in a Brisbane quarry.
The first, albeit scientifically unidentified, dinosaur fossil discovered in Australia was a 115-million-year-old theropod claw discovered in 1903 at Cape Paterson, Victoria, by William H Ferguson.
Later, the first officially named Australian dinosaur, the Rhoetosaurus brownei, was identified in 1926 from bones found in 1924 near Roma, Queensland.
The oldest Australian dinosaur fossil, however, was identified in February 2026.
The 18.5-centimetre footprint was discovered by a teenager at Petrie’s Quarry at Albion in 1958 but remained unstudied for more than 60 years.
University of Queensland (UQ) research has confirmed Brisbane’s only dinosaur fossil is the country’s oldest, dating back to the earliest part of the Late Triassic period 230 million years ago.
UQ Dr Anthony Romilio said the footprint set in stone proves dinosaurs were in fact roaming around Australia a lot earlier than previously thought.
“This is the only dinosaur fossil to be found in an Australian capital city and shows how globally significant discoveries can remain hidden in plain sight,” Romilio said.
Researchers at UQ said the quarry site has been largely inaccessible due to subsequent urban development, which has left this footprint as the only surviving dinosaur evidence from the area.
“It’s likely the dinosaur was walking through or alongside a waterway when it left the footprint before it was then preserved in sandstone, which was cut millions of years later to construct buildings across Brisbane,” Romilio said. “Without the foresight to preserve this material, Brisbane’s dinosaur history would still be completely unknown.”
It’s believed by the team at UQ that the footprint was made by a small, two-legged dinosaur, likely an early sauropodomorph, a primitive relative of later long-necked dinosaurs.
Romilio said the animal likely stood around 75 to 80-centimetres tall at the hip and weighed about 140-kilograms, based on its size
UQ study co-author Honorary Professor Bruce Runnegar was the teenager who made the discovery back in the 50’s, having visited the infamous quarry with a group of school friends and has kept it ever since.
“At the time, we suspected the marks might be dinosaur tracks, but we couldn’t have imagined their national significance,” Runnegar said. “It was a great example of a special kind of trace fossil because the footprint was made in sediment by a heavy animal. When I saw Dr Romilio’s ability to reconstruct, analyse, and map dinosaur footprints, I decided to reach out to have the fossil formally documented.”
Runnegar went on to study a Bachelor of Science and PhD at UQ and then teach palaeontology at the University of New England at Armidale and University of California, Los Angeles, where he’s showed all his students the Brisbane dinosaur fossils.
“More than 6- years after we found it, it’s extraordinary to see it recognised as Australia’s oldest dinosaur fossil,” Runnegar said.
The fossil is now housed at the Queensland Museum where it will be available for continuous research.
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