TORONTO -- Lily Wilder, a four-year-old girl from Britain who stumbled upon an ancient dinosaur footprint while on a walk with her family, has since developed a new interest in life.
“She’s gone dinosaur crazy,” her father Richard Wilder told CTV News Channel on Tuesday, adding that she’s been watching TV shows about dinosaurs and received plenty of dinosaur toys.
Lily found the footprint during a walk by the sea in south Wales, U.K. The footprint is thought to be preserved from 220 million years ago, and experts say it could help scientists learn more about how dinosaurs walked.
Wilder said that when Lily first pointed out the footprint, he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing.
"I didn’t think it was real, for starters. It’s not the sort of thing you happen upon,” he said.
After snapping some photos, the family reached out to a local palaeontologist, who verified the footprint as real. A museum then asked the family to remove social media posts about the footprint, so not as to tip off anyone who might be interested in taking it.
“Obviously they wanted it to be removed, so people didn’t get too excited and try to go down there and find it themselves,” Wilder said.
The U.K. remains in a strict lockdown and museums remain closed. But Wilder said he hopes that, when restrictions are eased, Lily will be able to go see the footprint again in a museum.
“And we can go see it with Lily’s name on a plaque next to it,” he said.
It’s unclear exactly what type of dinosaur created the footprint, which is just over 10 centimetres long. The National Museum of Wales Paleontology said it likely belonged to “a slender animal which walked on its two hind feet and actively hunted other small animals and insects.”
