Four-year-old girl finds 220 million-year-old dinosaur footprint on beach in Wales

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LONDON – A four-year-old girl has made a great discovery.

While walking along a beach in Wales with her father and dog, she spotted an extremely well-preserved dinosaur footprint that has excited paleontologists around the world.

Lily Wilder made the discovery near Bendricks Bay in South Wales, UK, finding a footprint believed to have been left 220 million years ago.

“It was on a low rock, shoulder height for Lily, and she just spotted it and said, ‘Look at daddy,'” her mother Sally Wilder, 41, told NBC News by phone on Saturday. .

“She’s really excited but doesn’t understand how amazing it is,” said Sally, an engineer. Adding that her husband took photos at the beach and then shared them with the family. It was Lily’s grandmother who encouraged them to contact local experts and fossil enthusiasts for further investigation.

While it is impossible to identify exactly what type of dinosaur left the 10 centimeter (3.9 inch) imprint, some facts are discernible, Cindy Howells, Amgueddfa Cymru Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Wales, told NBC News.

It is likely that the footprint was made by a dinosaur that was about 75 centimeters (29.5 inches) high and 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) long, she said.

It would have been a slender animal with a tail that walked on its two hind legs and actively hunted other small animals and insects, she added. The specimen’s footprint is known as the “grallator” and could help scientists better understand how dinosaurs walked.

“It’s awesome,” Howells told NBC News.

“It’s truly mind-blowing preservation … You can see every detail of the muscles and where the joints of the foot are.”

It is likely that Wales and many other land masses have historically had dinosaurs around them, Howells said. Unfortunately, there are no fossilized bones matching the imprint, she said, but similar imprints have been found in the United States, known to have been made by the “coelophysis” of dinosaurs.

“We haven’t even found a fraction of all dinosaur species yet,” Howells said, adding that the footprint Lily found provided a very useful “clue”.

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The Welsh beach is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the preserved fossil has now been safely removed. It will soon be brought to the Cardiff National Museum for future generations to enjoy and for scientists to study, the museum said in a statement.

The museum, currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, said that once it reopens, Lily and her school class will be invited to view the article and put her name next to it as “researcher Official.

Lily, who loves dinosaur TV shows and owns a collection of toys and models, told NBC News that the T-Rex is her favorite.

As she played with her baby brother George, 1, Lily’s mother said she encouraged parents facing coronavirus lockdown restrictions to take their children for nature walks, where possible in completely safe.

“We will continue to encourage exploration outside,” Sally said. “It’s great because it really interests them and the whole family can learn together.”