TORONTO -- A newfound dinosaur footprint was discovered by a four-year-old walking on the beach with her family in south Wales, U.K., which could help scientists establish more about how dinosaurs walked.
The footprint is thought to be preserved from 220 million years ago.
The girl, named in a National Museum Wales press release as Lily Wilder, found the footprint on a beach near the sea.
“It was Lily and Richard (her father) who discovered the footprint. Lily saw it as when they were walking along, and said ‘Daddy look’,” Sally Wilder, Lily’s mother, told the museum.
“We were thrilled to find out it really was a dinosaur footprint and I am happy that it will be taken to the national museum where we can be enjoyed and studied for generations,” she said.
The National Museum of Wales Paleontology curator Cindy Howells described the find “as the best specimen ever found” on that beach.
The footprint itself is known as a Grallator, a common type of small, three-toed footprint, but the exact dinosaur that made it is impossible to identify the museum said.
“The new footprint Is just over 10 cm long and is likely to have been made by a dinosaur that stood about 75 cm tall and 2.5 m long,” the museum release states. “It would have been a slender animal which walked on its two hind feet and actively hunted other small animals and insects.”
The footprint was extracted and is being taken to the National Museum Cardiff to be studied.
