The story reverberated around the world in the early 2000s: the well preserved track of a small stegosaur had been chiselled out of a stone ledge in Western Australia’s Kimberley.

It was suspected of being sold on a worldwide fossil black market.

It was the high point of a controversy that had erupted a decade earlier involving the incredibly significant — and sacred — Dampier Peninsula site in Western Australia.

But it’s turned out to be something of a storm in a teacup.

“Given the dark shadow these events have cast over the dinosaurian tracks of the Dampier Peninsula and Australian palaeontology in general, we feel it is important to provide an update,” a study published by the University of Queensland earlier this week says.

SACRED SONGLINES

The existence of the dinosaur tracks is nothing new to the local Aborigines. The coastal stones have long been considered sacred, and their presence permeates their culture.

For thousands of years a song cycle has followed the tracks through the Dampier Peninsula, each piece revealing an important aspect of sacred lore. And their appearance, and disappearance, in the landscape is considered to be part of an ongoing revelation of the story’s ‘Dreamtime’ — the Bugarrigarra.

To the Goolarabooloo, these weren’t dinosaurs. The often enormous tracks are the mark of their supernatural ancestor Marala, the Emu man.

Such cultural significance means any damage done to the tracks is seen as a serious offence. Punishment is by spearing.

But it also comes with a double-edged curse.

Illness and misfortune are believed to be meted out by the landscape’s ancient spirits against both offenders and custodians.

“I think this incident and the way it unfolded highlights just how important it is for scientists to work closely with traditional custodians whenever they can. The Maja of the Kimberley’s dinosaur tracks have been looking after this coastline for thousands of years. We should respect that, and now that the full extent of the areas dinosaur track fauna is known, it is the responsibility of the Australian people and our government to help ensure they are conserved for future generations,” says the lead author of the new study, University of Queensland palaeontologist Dr Steven Salisbury.

SAURIAN CONTROVERSY

The Dampier Peninsular dinosaur tracks drew significant media attention in the 1990s. Several tracks were removed and others hacked from the rock.

This resulted in a serious setback for ongoing studies at the site.

While almost all tracks were recovered, one significant set of prints remained unaccounted for.

As a result, the local custodians (known as Maja, or Law Bosses) became suspicious of the Western Australian Museum, palaeontologists, enthusiasts and even members of local indigenous communities.

They clamped down on access to the sacred track sites.

Fresh searches for tracks and the tales they tell of Cretaceous Australia were stymied.

But, in 2008, the Goolarabooloo faced a new threat to their heritage: a $40 billion liquid natural gas plant was proposed for a site right on top of the prints.

Could the palaeontologists be a help?

TRAIL OF EVENTS

The controversy began in 1991.

Dispute lingers over whether or not John Long, then a curator of palaeontology at the West Australian Museum, obtained sufficient permission from the local custodians before visiting several sites on the peninsula and removing a complete boulder containing tracks.

Housed for a time at the museum, casts were made of its stegosaurian prints and it was returned in 1994.

But footage from a documentary filmed around his research, The Great Dinosaur Hunt, is blamed for having tipped off treasure hunters as to the location of several sacred sites.

In 1996 the Goolarabooloo people discovered a section of stone overhang containing a track had been cut away using an angle grinder, though there was confusion as to what type of track was originally there.

Broome police were informed. The story exploded across the world.

In 1998 Michael Latham of Broome was charged and convicted for the theft of a theropod dinosaur track as well as that of two 7000-year-old human footprints from a separate site. These and another theropod track were later recovered, and a local station owner was convicted of being in the possession of stolen artefacts.

But there was another set of missing tracks: a section of rock platform containing stegosaurian prints Dr Long believed had been removed by chisels and drills.

Had this been smuggled overseas and sold?

INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION

In 2000, a worldwide hunt began.

It was, after all, a very significant piece of rock. It held what was then only the second known set of stegosauran impressions ever found in Australia.

“At the time it was a big news story,” Mr Long, now a professor, told News Corp. “People had notified us they were gone, and from photographs it looked like there was a cut mark in the rock.”

By coincidence, he had been approached to help with a documentary about the illegal fossil trade. He thought the missing Broome piece was an ideal case study.

Professor Long spent three months filming a two-part documentary series The Dinosaur Dealers in an effort to track the missing prints down. In 2002 he published a book in the same name.

“We did what we thought was the right thing at the time, and the (WA) museum wanted to have a role in returning the missing footprints,” he said.

But no trace was found.

The Goolarabooloo people remained deeply offended. Little new research was permitted on their remote, sacred sites.

Then came the gas plant proposal.

NO STONE UNTURNED

Desperate elders sought out Dr Salisbury in 2010-11 to investigate the dinosaur tracks and convince the world of their immense value.

“We needed the world to see what was at stake,” Goolarabooloo Law Boss Phillip Roe said.

The spirits smiled on their quest.

After six years of research involving The University of Queensland and James Cook University’s School of Earth and Environmental Science, the study just published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology does just that.

Salisbury and his team uncovered 21 different types of preserved prints — the most diverse collection in the world.

“Among the tracks is the only confirmed evidence of stegosaurs in Australia,” Dr Salisbury says. “There are also some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever recorded. Some of the sauropod tracks are around 1.7m long.”

It has been an all-round success.

The gas plant fell through. The coastline has been designated a National Heritage site. And palaeontologists are once again welcome — with permission — to roam the coast.

And one outstanding issue has been resolved.

“Significantly, during this study, we were able to relocate the supposedly missing ‘stegosaurian’ tracks,” the research paper proclaims.

PIECED TOGETHER

The researchers traced the lost footprints to a weathered coastal platform through old photographs. They found the ledge containing the tracks had actually split and broken away.

Cyclone activity had separated the fallen fragments.

The prints are still there — albeit scattered in two pieces. And it has since been identified as belonging to a new type of stegosauran footprint — Luluichnus mueckei.

“We … suspect that these L. mueckei tracks have been at the site all along, and that their continued presence there went unnoticed once the portion of rock platform on which they are preserved broke up,” the study reads.

“So thankfully, but somewhat ironically, despite a nearly two-decade search, Australia’s most infamous fossil theft appears never to have happened. With the 1994 repatriation of the ‘stegosaurian’ boulder from the Western Australian Museum, the recovery of the two theropod tracks stolen by Latham, and the rediscovery of the other ‘missing’ ‘stegosaurian’ tracks, all the tracks that were either thought or known to be missing can now be accounted for.”

Professor Long says he is both relieved and amazed.

“I have great respect for Steve Salisbury’s work, I consider this monograph a true icon of Australian palaeontology, one of the greatest contributions to expanding our understanding of Australian dinosaur diversity ever published,” he says.

“It will have huge impact on how governments and agencies view the significance of the region for heritage purposes.”

He says he’s also happy the missing prints have been found.

“It can go back to its place,” he says. “In the context of its trackway, we can see a piece of life — an animal that lived and moved — 100 million years ago. It’s fantastic.”