A tourist found fossilized tracks of 280 million-year-old reptiles in the Italian Alps that lived in the Permian period, before the dinosaurs.
According to InterestingEngineering, the fossils were discovered in the Valtellina Orobi mountain range in northern Italy by local resident Claudia Steffensen while hiking in the mountains with her husband.
“My husband was walking in front of me looking straight ahead and I was looking at my feet. I stepped on a stone which seemed strange to me as it looked more like a cement slab. Then I noticed strange circular wave patterns "Looking more closely, I realized they were paw prints," she said.
Steffensen took a photo of the plaque and sent it to his friend, the photographer Elio Della Ferrera, who forwarded it to Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Milan. The photo sparked widespread interest among experts, which led to further research.
After research, scientists found that the footprints found at an altitude of 1,700 meters belonged to a prehistoric reptile that roamed the area about 280 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs.
Further exploration of the nature park revealed hundreds of fossilized paw prints of animals such as amphibians, reptiles and insects. Many of the prints were aligned and formed "tracks," suggesting they were made by five or more animal species. As noted by paleontologists, the owners of the largest prints had quite significant sizes - up to 2-3 meters in length.
The scientists also found fossilized plant fragments, seeds and imprints of raindrops. It is noted that these traces were discovered due to climate changes that led to the melting of the ice in the Alps.
Earlier in the US, paleontologists found a fossil of a "swamp dweller" that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. This mammal was about the size of a muskrat (a type of rodent the size of an otter) and could run across swamps. | BGNES
