Archaeologist Marie Woods was wandering along the coast in England in search of shellfish to make for dinner when she stumbled upon a massive dinosaur footprint.

考古学家玛丽·伍兹在英国海岸边漫步，起初她只想寻找一些贝壳当晚餐，却偶然发现了一个巨大的恐龙脚印。

Measuring more than 3 feet long, the three-toed track is the largest ever discovered in Yorkshire, a county in northern England. It likely belonged to a giant, meat-eating dinosaur that crouched down and pressed its feet deeply into the mud around 166 million years ago, according to a new paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

脚印长超过3英尺，这个三趾足迹是在英格兰北部的约克郡发现的最大的。根据本周发表在《约克郡地质学会议事录》杂志上的一篇新论文，它可能属于一个巨大的肉食恐龙，大约1.66亿年前的一次下蹲将脚深深地压入了泥土。

She’d been walking along the shore in Burniston Bay, which is situated a few miles north of the town of Scarborough. This area is part of the so-called “Dinosaur Coast” in eastern Yorkshire, where a wide variety of dinosaurs roamed between 160 and 175 million years ago.

当时在伯尼斯顿湾的海岸边散步，该湾位于斯卡伯勒镇以北几英里处。这个地区是约克郡东部所谓的 "恐龙海岸 "的一部分，在1.6亿至1.75亿年前，各种各样的恐龙在这里游荡。

Woods shared the find with her friend Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester and co-author on the new paper, who initially thought she was joking, reports CNN’s Ashley Strickland. However, once Lomax realized Woods was serious, the two got to work figuring out what to do with the enormous Jurassic Period remnant.

据CNN的阿什利·斯特里克兰报道，伍兹与她的朋友迪安·洛马克斯分享了这一发现，迪安·洛马克斯是曼彻斯特大学的古生物学家，也是这篇新论文的共同作者，他最初以为她在开玩笑。然而，当洛马克斯意识到伍兹是认真的，两人就开始研究如何处理这个巨大的侏罗纪时期遗留物。

They feared the tide might erode the footprint or that it would become damaged in a landslide, so they contacted fossil collectors to help carefully remove the specimen and transport it to the Scarborough Museum and Galleries. During this recovery mission, the group also realized that local fossil hunter Rob Taylor—a co-author on the new paper—had spotted the print five months earlier, when it was not yet fully exposed.

他们担心潮汐可能会侵蚀脚印或在山体滑坡中受损，因此他们联系了化石收集者，帮助小心地移走标本，并将其运送到斯卡伯勒博物馆和画廊。在这次回收任务中，该小组还意识到，当地化石猎人罗布·泰勒--新论文的合著者--在五个月前就发现了这个脚印，当时它还没有完全暴露。