British paleontologists have discovered footprints on a Wales beach that they believe were left by a dinosaur more than 200 million years ago.
The footprints are believed to have been made by an early sauropod way back in the Triassic period, according to Dr. Susannah Maidment of London’s Natural History Museum. “We know early sauropods were living in Britain at the time, as bones of Camelotia, a very early sauropod, have been found in Somerset in rocks dated to the same period,” Maidment says. “We don’t know if this species was the track-maker, but it is another clue which suggests something like it could have made these tracks.”
Footprints discovered on a beach in Wales are believed to have been made by an early dinosaur more than 200 million years ago, experts say. https://t.co/eVc91XNTIi
— CNN (@CNN) January 2, 2022
Maidment’s research partner, Professor Paul Barrett, says the discovery could give paleontologists a better understanding of how early dinosaurs behaved and interacted with other creatures. “These types of tracks are not particularly common worldwide, so we believe this is an interesting addition to our knowledge of Triassic life in the UK,” he says. “The record of Triassic dinosaurs in this country is fairly small, so anything we can find from the period adds to our picture of what was going on at that time.”
How could footprints on a beach go unnoticed for 200 million years?
