A well-preserved dinosaur footprint has been discovered on a beach near Barry in south Wales and could help scientists establish more about how dinosaurs walked.
Four-year-old Lily Wilder and her family made the discovery whilst out on a walk in their local area in January.
Lily was the first to spot the new footprint on a loose block near the sea at Bendricks Bay - a well-known beach for its dinosaur footprints, preserved for 220 million years in desert muds.
Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum of Wales Palaeontology curator Cindy Howells was notified of the find and has described it as the best specimen ever found on this beach. The specimen is a type of footprint called Grallator, although it is impossible to identify which dinosaur made the print 220 million years ago.
The new footprint is just over 10cm long and is likely to have been made by a dinosaur that stood about 75cm tall and 2.5m long. It would have been a slender animal which walked on its two hind feet and actively hunted other small animals and insects.
There are no fossilised bones from this 220 million year old dinosaur, but similar footprints in the USA are known to have been made by the dinosaur Coelophysis which does not occur in the UK.
