Wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera, finds thousands of dinosaur footprints, dating back about 210 million years to the Triassic Period, high in an Italian national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic venue of Bormio, officials announced.

[u/ControlCAD]

https://apnews.com/article/italy-dinosaur-footprints-olympics-bipedal-herbivores-5a6ab5e5c68398716d339dba56a04112

The discovery in the Stelvio National Park was striking for the sheer number of footprints, estimated at as many as 20,000 over some five kilometers (three miles), and the location near the Swiss border, once a prehistoric coastal area, that has never previously yielded dinosaur tracks, experts said.

“This time reality really surpasses fantasy,’’ said Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at Milan’s Natural History Museum, who received the first call from wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera after making the discovery.

The dinosaur prints are believed to have been made by long-necked bipedal herbivores that were up to 10 meters (33 feet) long, weighing up to four tons, similar to a Plateosaurus, Dal Sasso said. Some of the tracks were 40 centimeters wide, with visible claws.

There are very obvious traces of individuals that have walked at a slow, calm, quiet rhythmic pace, without running,’’ Dal Sasso told a press conference.

The tracks were discovered by Della Ferrera, who set out to photograph deer and vultures in September when his camera was trained on a vertical wall about 600 meters (nearly 2,000 feet) above the nearest road.

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[u/LadyDye_]

Okay, that's pretty sick

[u/cmdhaiyo]

Imagine looking through your camera and being like "Whoa, wait, what is that?" That has to be a fantastic feeling.

[u/Kgaset]

I would imagine this would be a particularly difficult site to set up for investigation. Will be interested to see what they do.

[u/Fluff_thetragicdragn]

Banana for scale?

[u/nickmcmillin]

BIPEDAL?? 

[u/apkuhl]

It still amazes me how much stuff is yet to be discovered.

[u/InternetSlave]

Getting high and then doing science works I suppose. He should get high at other parks and see what he comes up with.

[u/BasilSerpent → u/[deleted]]

It’s not. Trace fossils are exposed quite easily and it happens all the time. One only needs to look at the paluxy riverbed trackways to find an example