If experts are to believed, footprints of an early dinosaur, which were made more than 200 million years ago, have been discovered on a beach in Wales, the UK.
The footprints, which date back to the Triassic period, seem to belong to an early sauropod or its relative, said paleontologists at London’s Natural History Museum.
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In a statement, Dr Susannah Maidment, paleontologist at the museum, who was also involved in the research, while announcing the findings, said, “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.”
A series of tracks on a public beach point to the presence of large, long-necked dinosaurs in Wales over 200 million years ago.
The Penarth footprints are believed to have been left by sauropodomorphs, a group which includes the iconic Diplodocus 🦕 https://t.co/i4ef9WM8jk
— Natural History Museum (@NHM_London) December 31, 2021
“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.”
In 2020, an amateur paleontologist had sent images of the tracks at the beach in Penarth to Maidment and her colleague, professor Paul Barrett.
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Maidment and Barrett also visited the site to probe the tracks and record measurements.
In the museum’s announcement of the findings, Barrett said, “We believed the impressions we saw at Penarth were consistently spaced to suggest an animal walking. We also saw displacement rims where mud had been pushed up. These structures are characteristic of active movement through the soft ground.”
(With inputs from agencies)
