A four-year-old girl has discovered a 220-million-year-old dinosaur footprint in a beach in South Wales.
Lily Wilder‘s amazing discovery could help scientists understand how dinosaurs walked since it is a 220 million-year-old footprint. While walking along a beach near Barry, she found the 10-cm long footprint that appears to be from a 75cm slender animal.
Lily’s mother Sally told NBC News, “It was Lily and Richard (her father) who discovered the footprint. Lily saw it when they were walking along and said ‘daddy look’. When Richard came home and showed me the photograph, I thought it looked amazing,”
“She is really excited but doesn’t quite grasp how amazing it is,” She also added that it was Lily’s grandmother who encouraged them to reach out to local experts and fossil enthusiasts for further investigation.
After Lily discovered it, special permission was received from Natural Resources Wales to legally remove the footprint.
The fossil will be extracted this week and taken to the National Museum Cardiff where it will be preserved.
As per palaeontology curator Cindy Howells of National Museum Wales, the dinosaur footprint is “the best specimen ever found on this beach”.