Let this story be a lesson to every parent. The next time your kid says “come look at what I found,” no matter how dumb you think the discovery will be, you at least give it a glance.
Lily Wilder, 4, was walking a beach in Bendricks Bay, Wales, with her father when she discovered a 220-million-year-old dinosaur footprint.
National Museum Wales paleontology curator Cindy Howells described the print preserved in the mud as “the best specimen ever found on this beach.”
New dinosaur footprint discovered on south Wales beach!
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
More: https://t.co/YVXOVNrjwm pic.twitter.com/fpJaoxOrnu
— Amgueddfa Caerdydd (@Museum_Cardiff) January 29, 2021
“Lily saw it when they were walking along and said ‘daddy look’. When Richard came home and showed me the photograph, I thought it looked amazing. Richard thought it was too good to be true. I was put in touch with experts who took it from there,” explained the girl’s mother, Sally.
This isn’t the first time a dinosaur discovery has been made by a young kid. Back in 2017, a 9-year-old discovered a million-year-old fossil in the New Mexico desert after accidentally tripping over it while playing with his brother.
Howells told the BBC that it would be impossible to tell what kind of dinosaur left the marking, the print is 10cm long and “likely from a 75cm (about 2.5 feet) tall dinosaur.”
This dinosaur would also have been “a slender animal” and walked on its two hind feet.
The BBC reported that “specimens found at Bendricks Bay in the past are thought to be from more crocodilian-type reptiles rather than dinosaurs” but that area is “the best site in Britain for dinosaur tracks of the Triassic Period.”
The fossil will be extracted this week and taken to National Museum Cardiff to be preserved.
[via BBC]