Apr 27 2024
4-year-old discovers 220 million-year-old footprint of the dinosaur on the beach
Mon 01 Feb 2021
A young girl found a dinosaur footprint on Welsh beach and made a major discovery. According to The Independent, Lily Wilder found footprints while walking on the beach near Barry, South Wales.
While walking with her father and their pet dog on the beach in Wales, she found a well-preserved dinosaur footprint, which excited paleontologists around the world. Scientists believe that this 220 million-year-old footprint can help us better understand how dinosaurs walked.
“It was on a low rock, shoulder height for Lily, and she just spotted it and said, ‘look Daddy,'” Lily’s mother, Sally Wilder, 41, told NBC News on Saturday. “When Richard came home to show me the photo, I thought it looked great. “Richard thought it was too good to be true. I was put in touch with experts who took it from there.”
Lily Wilder found dinosaur tracks on Bendricks Bay, a beach famous for dinosaur tracks. But even for the beach known for its dinosaur footprints, Lily’s discovery is extraordinary.
Cindy Howells, the curator of paleontology at the National Museum of Wales, described the discovery as “the best specimen ever found on this beach.”
The footprint is about 10 cm long and may have been made by a dinosaur about 75 cm high and 2.5 m long, although it is impossible to determine which dinosaur was made 220 million years ago. The fossil was extracted this week and taken to the National Museum of Cardiff for preservation.
“Its spectacular preservation may help scientists establish more about the actual structure of their feet as the preservation is clear enough to show individual pads and even claw impressions,” The National Museum of Wales said in a statement.
