A huge lumbering beast responsible for creating the world’s longest track of fossilised tracks has been named Thunderfoot by experts.

Scientists have been studying the footprints, uncovered in the Jura mountains of France and created 150 million years ago, for almost eight years.

The depth of the prints left by the creature and the length of its stride have revealed the massive size of the dinosaur, which was the length of three buses.

Researchers believe the series of 110 craters extending over 500ft were created by a 114 foot (35 m) long Sauropod weighing 38.5 tons (35 tonnes).

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The huge lumbering beast responsible for creating the world’s longest track of fossilised tracks has been named Thunderfoot by experts. The depth of the prints left by the creature and the length of its stride have revealed the massive size of the dinosaur

HOW WERE THE TRACKS UNCOVERED? Fossil hunters from the Oyonnax Naturalists' Society discovered the huge dinosaur footprints in 2009. The five foot (1.5 m) wide prints were made about 150 million years ago by sauropods - long-necked herbivores - in chalky sediment in the Jura plateau of eastern France. Two eagle-eyed nature lovers, Marie-Helene Marcaud and Patrice Landry, discovered the site on a path through a mountain prairie and reported it to scientists. Hikers often passed by the area where the French discoveries were made, but nobody had reported dino prints before. The Jura mountains gave the Jurassic period their name because rocks from the period were found there. Back then, the area resembled the Bahamas, covered in water and islands. The dinosaurs are believed to have left their tracks in the mud, which then dried in the sun, and were then covered up by sea and sediment, safeguarding the prints through history. Advertisement

The findings were made public by the Laboratoire de Geologie de Lyon, who revealed that the animal will be named after the small French village where it was uncovered.

Its scientific name Brontopodus plagenensis translates as ‘Thunderfoot from Plagne’.

In 2009, 20 prints were found scattered over the length of the trackway.

Between 2010 and 2012, researchers from the research institution supervised digs at the site, a meadow covering 7.5 acres (three hectares), just over four times the size of a football pitch.

Their work unearthed many more dinosaur footprints and trackways, finding that they were part of a 110-step trackway that extends over 500 feet (155 m), a world record for sauropods, which were the largest of the dinosaurs.

In a written statement, a spokesman for the Centre national de la recherche scientifique said: 'Dating of the limestone layers reveals that the trackway was formed 150 million years ago, during the Early Tithonian Age of the Jurassic Period.

'At that time, the Plagne site lay on a vast carbonate platform bathed in a warm, shallow sea.

'The presence of large dinosaurs indicates the region must have been studded with many islands that offered enough vegetation to sustain the animals.

'Land bridges emerged when the sea level lowered, connecting the islands and allowing the giant vertebrates to migrate from dry land in the Rhenish Massif.'

Fossil hunters from the Oyonnax Naturalists' Society discovered the huge dinosaur footprints in 2009.

Researchers believe the series of 110 craters were created by a 114 foot (35 m) long Sauropod (artist's impression of scale) weighing 38.5 tons (35 tonnes). Its scientific name Brontopodus plagenensis translates as ‘Thunderfoot from Plagne’

The five foot (1.5 m) wide prints were made about 150 million years ago by sauropods - long-necked herbivores - in chalky sediment in the Jura plateau of eastern France.

Two eagle-eyed nature lovers, Marie-Helene Marcaud and Patrice Landry, discovered the site on a path through a mountain prairie and reported it to scientists.

Hikers often passed by the area where the French discoveries were made, but nobody had reported dino prints before.

The Jura mountains gave the Jurassic period their name because rocks from the period were found there.

Back then, the area resembled the Bahamas, covered in water and islands.

The dinosaurs are believed to have left their tracks in the mud, which then dried in the sun, and were then covered up by sea and sediment, safeguarding the prints through history.

WHAT ARE SAUROPODS? Sauropods were four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs. They had long necks and tails and relatively small skulls and brains. They reached up to 165 feet (50 metres) in length and weighed as much as 77 tons (12.7 tonnes), 14 times the weight of an African elephant. They were widespread and their remains have been found on all the continents except Antarctica. Sauropods like the Diplodocus (artist's impression) were four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs. They had long necks and tails and relatively small skulls and brains. They had nostrils high up on their skulls, rather than being located at the end of the snout like those of so many other terrestrial vertebrates. Some fossils shows that these nostril openings were so far up the skull that there were very close to the eye openings. Sauropods such as the Diplodocus began to diversify in the Middle Jurassic about 180 million years ago. Advertisement

Additional excavations conducted as late as 2015 enabled closer study of the tracks.

Those left by the sauropod's feet span around three feet (one metre) and the total length can reach up to 10 feet (three meters), when including the mud ring displaced by each step.

The footprints reveal five elliptical toe marks, while the handprints are characterised by five circular finger marks arranged in an arc.

It traveled at a speed of around 2.5 miles per hour (four km/h).

Other dinosaur trackways can be found at the Plagne site, including a series of 18 tracks extending over 38 m, left by a carnivore of the ichnogenus Megalosauripus.

The researchers have since covered these tracks to protect them from the elements, but they believe many more remain to be found and studied in Plagne.

The full findings were published in the journal Geobios.