The paleontologist Mary Anning, known throughout the world for her findings on the seabeds of the Jurassic period in the English town where she lived, sparked interest in this discipline and the possibility of finding a fossil from the Jurassic era even today. Hence there are many visitors who flock to the Dorset shores for such an undertaking. Now, a team of paleontologists from the Natural History Museum in London has found dinosaur footprints from 200 million years ago on a beach in Wales (England): in the Blue Anchor Formation.
Convinced that the prints studied and photographed were footprints on the beach, they wondered what kind of creature made them.
“We know that the earliest sauropods were living in Britain at the time, as bones of Camelotia, a very early sauropod, have been found in Somerset in rocks dating from the same period,” explains Susannah Maidment, a museum paleontologist who was involved in the study. in the investigation that collects the magazine Geological Magazine.
It appears that one of these early sauropods may have left these footprints which are quite irregular but are more than 20-60 cm in diameter and more than 5-10 cm deep.
“We don’t know if this species was the one that made the footprints, but it ‘s another clue that suggests something like this could have made these footprints, ” say the experts.
The footprints will have to be left on the shore and will eventually disappear over time ; nothing else can be done, so the team has taken 3D images of these footprints to be able to study them in the future once they have disappeared forever.
Referencia: Peter L. Falkingham et al. Late Triassic dinosaur tracks from Penarth, south Wales. Geological Magazine, published online December 29, 2021; doi: 10.1017/S0016756821001308
