Dinosaur footprints on the menu at Sichuan restaurant

Palaeontologists have confirmed marks noticed by a diner in the garden of a restaurant in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan are dinosaur footprints, thecover.cn reported on Sunday.

The footprints, believed to belong to the early Cretaceous period, are of two brontosaurus, a family of gigantic quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaurs.

They're said to be the first dinosaur footprints in the world to be discovered in a restaurant, it was reported.

The site was uncovered thanks to a man called Ou Hongtao, who dined at the restaurant "Yuanyi Senlin" on July 10. The restaurant is located in Leshan city which is famous for its Leshan Giant Buddha, the largest and tallest stone Buddha statue in the world.

Ou, who has great interest in palaeontology for his job which is related to stone materials, said he inadvertently spotted some curious dents on the stone ground in the garden of the restaurant that he thought might be dinosaur prints.

That evening, Ou contacted Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences, a famous palaeontologist and popular science writer, on the Internet about his discovery.

Together with a group of fellow palaeontologists, Xing arrived at the restaurant on Saturday to examine the stone marks. The scientists drew their conclusion that the marks were dinosaur footprints after a measuring, drone photographing and 3D scanning of the prints.

Altogether about a dozen footprints of the brontosaurus in two lines were found. They're believed to belong to two dinosaurs of the family which were about eight meters long as they walked along a river in ancient Leshan about 100 million years ago.

This is the first time fossils with dinosaur footprints have been discovered in urban areas of Leshan city and raises the possibility of more finds, said Xing.

The experts advised the restaurant to carefully preserve the site.