Queensland paleontologists have discovered the world's only recorded dinosaur stampede is largely made up of the tracks of swimming, not running, animals.

A University of Queensland PhD candidate, Anthony Romilio, led the study of thousands of small dinosaur tracks at Lark Quarry Conservation Park in Queensland's central west.

Fossils … swimming, not running

The tracks, which are 95 million to 98 million years old, are preserved in beds of siltstone and sandstone deposited in a shallow river when the area was part of a vast, forested floodplain.

''Many of the tracks are nothing more than elongated grooves, and probably formed when the claws of swimming dinosaurs scratched the river bottom,'' Mr Romilio said on Wednesday.