Thousands of dinosaur tracks left around 210 million years ago have been discovered in Italy’s Stelvio National Park, located in the Central Alps.
“It is a real ‘dinosaur valley’ stretching for kilometers: it is the largest site in the Alps and one of the richest in the world,” paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso from the Natural History Museum in Milan said.
The tracks, hundreds of meters long, left by herds of large herbivores on almost vertical dolomite rock faces, are reportedly well preserved enough to show impressions of toes and claws.
Dal Sasso described the find as one of the most important paleontological discoveries related to Italian dinosaurs.
“This area was full of dinosaurs; it is an enormous scientific heritage whose study will take decades, also because the site is not accessible by trails, and in order to examine the tracks, we will have to use drones and remote sensing technologies,” he explained.
According to initial analyses, it is estimated that the footprints belong to Late Triassic prosauropod dinosaurs, which are herbivores with long necks, small heads, and sharp claws.
