Large dinosaur footprints found in Australia

By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Large, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed southern Australia 115 million years ago, when the continent was joined to the Antarctica, and were padded with body fat to survive temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Standing about 12-feet tall, these hardy creatures inhabited the area close to the South Pole for at least 10 million years during the Cretaceous period, an expert said.

Palaeontologists from Australia and the United States came by their findings after uncovering three separate fossil footprints measuring about 14 inches long, each with at least two or three partial toes.

The footprints were found close to the shoreline in Victoria, Australia, in February 2006 and February 2007.

"(They are) the biggest carnivores we have from polar southeastern Australia ... in other words (large) dinosaurs could live in these unusual environments," said Thomas Rich, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Museum of Victoria.

"We have had evidence of small ones ... but we didn't have any evidence of the really big ones until this came along," Rich said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Australia was once part of the southern supercontinent of Gondwana, which also included South America, Africa, India and Antarctica. Gondwana began to break up about 120 million years ago and Australia separated from Antarctica about 50 million years ago and began moving northwards.

Rich said the area that the creatures roamed was far from hospitable, with winter temperatures plunging to minus -30 degrees Celsius (-22 F), although summer temperatures reached around 20 C (68 F).