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(CNN) - Scientists found evidence that large carnivorous dinosaurs lived in Australia.
A team of researchers analyzed fossils of dinosaur footprints and concluded that they belonged to carnivorous dinosaurs with large bodies that were up to three meters high at the hips and about 10 meters long, according to a press release from the University of Queensland.
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"To put it in perspective, the tyrannosaurus rex reached about 3.25 meters on the hips and reached lengths of 12-13 meters long, but it didn't appear until 90 million years after our Queensland giants," said the lead researcher. Anthony Romilio, paleontologist at the university.
Some of the tracks were up to 80 centimeters long.
“The Queensland footprints were probably made by giant carnosaurs, the group that includes the allosaurus. At the time, those were probably some of the largest predatory dinosaurs on the planet, "he added.
The footprints, which date back to the late Jurassic period, between 165 and 151 million years ago, were mostly between 50 and 60 centimeters in length, Romilio said, and some reached almost 80 centimeters.
"These tracks were made by dinosaurs walking through the swampy forests that once occupied much of the landscape of what is now southern Queensland," he explained.
Romilio notes that paleontologists previously knew about Tyrannosaurus Rex in North America, Giganotosaurus in South America, and Spinosaurus in Africa, but there is now evidence that Australia had large carnivorous dinosaurs.
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Although this is the first time that fossils have been scientifically described, they were discovered more than half a century ago, Romilio said.
"They were discovered on the roofs of the underground coal mines at Rosewood, near Ipswich, and Oakey, just north of Toowoomba, in the 1950s and 1960s," he said, explaining that they had remained in museum drawers during decades.
Study reveals a dinosaur's diet 0:42The full research article was published in the journal Historical Biology .
In 2017, researchers found the world's largest dinosaur footprint in northwest Australia.
Measuring about 1.75 meters, the footprint belonged to a sauropod, a long-necked herbivore.
The record was previously held by a 1.15 meter long footprint found in Bolivia in July 2016, which was the largest so far of a carnivorous dinosaur.
Australia Carnivorous Dinosaurs