Some children will find cool stones and some even a rare silver coin, but a 4-year-old Welsh girl in the south-west of the UK may have blown all the traces out of the water. after encountering a dinosaur find on the beach.
Lilly Wilder was on a walk with her father and dog near Bendricks Bay in south Wales when she spotted a fossil of this well-preserved prehistoric creature. The print is thought to date back 220 million years and has inspired paleontologists around the world.
“He was on a low, shoulder-high rock for Lily, and she saw him and said, ‘Look Daddy,'” Lilly’s mother Sally Wilder told NBC News on Saturday.
“She (Lilly) is excited but she doesn’t understand how amazing it is,” she said, adding that it was Lilly’s grandmother who inspired them to reach out to experts with the photos they took.
Measuring 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter, the exact owner of the footprint remains a mystery, but experts have estimated that the dinosaur was about 75 centimeters high and 2.5 meters (8 meters) high. feet) long.
Cindy Howells, curator of paleontology at Amóid Cymru – National Museum of Wales, said the dinosaur appeared to be a slender member of the dinosaur family that walked on its hind legs and ate small insects and animals.
“This is one of the most preserved examples anywhere in the UK and will support paleontologists to get a better idea of how these early dinosaurs walked,” she said.
“It’s really amazing retention … You can see all the details about the muscles and where the joints are in the leg,” Howells said.
The fossil will now be moved to National Museum Cardiff for further study and preservation. The museum said Lilly and her classmates will be invited to exhibit once the outbreak is over, and Lilly will be listed as an “official finder. “
The National Museum of Wales said in a statement that fossil bones were not from this 220 million year old dinosaur, but similar prints found in the US belong to the dinosaur coelophysis.
Bendricks Bay is also famous for being an important paleontology site containing “Triassic-era dinosaur tracks” and “crocodilian-type reptiles.”
This discovery follows a recent discovery by archaeologists in Argentina, who found the fossil remains of a gigantic, 98-million-year-old sauropod for the largest known dinosaur.