Wales
Hobby researcher discovers a 200 million year old dinosaur track
The footprint on Penarth Beach in South Wales. Photo: Peter Falkingham / Natural History / PA Media / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A hobby researcher discovered a 200 million year old dinosaur trail in Wales. The find causes a stir among British scientists.
British scientists are excited to see a 50-meter-long trail of an early relative of the dinosaurs on a Welsh beach.
The prints suggested that large, long-necked dinosaurs lived in the area more than 200 million years ago, the Natural History Museum in London tweeted. Possibly they were representatives of the Sauropodomorpha. The well-known genus Diplodocus also belongs to this group. Hobby researcher Kerry Rees discovered the tracks in 2020 on Penarth Beach near Cardiff, it said.
She was skeptical at first, said museum expert Susannah Maidment. But after detailed investigations, she and her colleague Paul Barrett are of the opinion that there are traces from the Triassic period, which was around 200 to 250 million years ago. The prints indicated a walking animal, Barrett said. There are also places where mud has been pushed up. “These structures are characteristic of active movement in soft ground.” The impressions are documented with the aid of 3D images.
The scientists have published their findings in the journal “Geological Magazine”.