Palaeontologists find thousands of Triassic-era dinosaur footprints on a near-vertical rockface in Italy’s Stelvio National Park, calling it a major discovery.
STELVIO NATIONAL PARK: Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been discovered on an almost vertical rockface in Italy’s Stelvio National Park.
The tracks are located at a height of more than 2,000 metres in the Valle di Fraele valley near Bormio.
Palaeontologist Christiano Dal Sasso of Milan’s Natural History Museum described the find as a proper Dinosaur Valley stretching for kilometres.
“It’s the largest find in the Alps and one of the richest in the world,” he said.
Researchers say the footprints date from the Triassic Period, more than 200 million years ago.
They are believed to have been left by long-necked herbivores, likely moving in large herds.
The individual tracks are up to 40 centimetres wide and show clear traces of claws.
During the Triassic Period, a warm lagoon provided an ideal environment for dinosaurs in this area.
Scientists believe the prints were made by a species called Plateosaurus when the ground was soft and marshy.
That surface has since hardened, preserving anatomical details of the animals’ feet.
Dal Sasso called it an enormous scientific legacy that will take decades to research fully.
The find is in inaccessible terrain that can in part only be investigated by drone.
The fact the footprints are on a near-vertical face adds significant difficulty for researchers.
Geological deformation has lifted the originally level surface to its current dramatic angle. – Bernama-dpa
