Palaeontologists have identified an unprecedented 21 different types of dinosaur tracks on a 25km stretch of coastline in Western Australia's north that was previously earmarked for a massive gas processing plant.
James Price Point near Broome in WA's Kimberley region, traditionally known as Walmadany, was the proposed site for the Woodside-led Browse gas plant, even though the presence of dinosaur prints was known.
The joint venture ultimately abandoned the onshore proposal - which had sparked protests not just about the dinosaur prints but also on Aboriginal heritage and whale welfare grounds - citing escalating costs.
University of Queensland's Steve Salisbury, who expressed concern about Browse when pre-construction surveys were being done near the footprints, said he was relieved when National Heritage listing was granted to the area in 2011 and the onshore project collapsed in 2013.
Dr Salisbury said the diversity of the tracks around James Price Point was globally unparalleled and made the area the "Cretaceous equivalent of the Serengeti".
He also dubbed the area "Australia's own Jurassic Park".
"It is extremely significant, forming the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half the continent and providing the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period," he said.
Dr Salisbury said the tracks were some of the largest ever recorded, including sauropod prints around 1.7 metres long.
"There are thousands of tracks around Walmadany. Of these, 150 can confidently be assigned to 21 specific track types, representing four main groups of dinosaurs," he said.
"There were five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods and six types of tracks from armoured dinosaurs."
The tracks also included the only confirmed evidence of stegosaurus in Australia, Dr Salisbury said.
The tracks are considerably older than most of Australia's dinosaur fossils, which come from the eastern side of the continent and are between 115 and 90 million years old, he said.
In 2010 as public opposition to Browse mounted, then-premier Colin Barnett labelled James Price Point an "unremarkable bit of coast".
The more than 400 hour University of Queensland and James Cook University study was prompted by the traditional custodians, the Goolarabooloo people.
"We needed the world to see what was at stake," Goolarabooloo law boss Phillip Roe said.
Meanwhile, after ditching plans to send gas from the Browse field to a floating LNG vessel last year, Woodside now says it would prefer to pipe the gas to its existing North West Shelf processing plant at Karratha in the Pilbara region.
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