In the Stelvio National Parka well-known mountain natural park that extends between Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige, thousands of dinosaur footprints have been discovered imprinted in the rock. The footprints found are found on almost vertical dolomite walls today, and this is not a strange fact: in fact they date back to the Upper Triassic period (more than 200 million years ago), when this area was not yet a mountain but a flat lagoon along the shores of the Tethys Ocean, a place with a tropical climate subject to the tides. The arrangement of these footprints, therefore, which now seems incredible to us, is nothing other than the result of a series of geological processes that led to the lifting of the Alpine chain.
The discovery dates back to mid-September, when during an excursion in an area of the park between Livigno and Bormio, the Valdidentro (Valle di Fraele), the naturalist photographer Elio Della Ferrera he noticed the strange footprints (some with a diameter of 40 centimeters) on the now almost vertical walls. Realizing the exceptional nature of the discovery, Della Ferrera then sent his shots to the scholars and the Superintendence.
According to initial assessments, the footprints – so well preserved that in some places even the marks of fingers and claws are visible – belong to prosauropodslarge long-necked herbivores that could reach 10 meters in length, considered the ancestors of Jurassic sauropods.
The observed parallel slopes clearly attest to the presence of packs that moved in a coordinated way, although in some areas the tracks are even arranged circularly, perhaps suggesting defense behaviors compared to other herds.
The Lombardy Region is reporting this Cristiano Dal Sassopaleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Milan. Dal Sasso stated that this would be the most important discovery on Italian dinosaurs after that of Ciro, and that:
It is a real dinosaur valley, which extends for kilometers: it is the largest site in the Alps and one of the richest in the world.
This extraordinary discovery will require years of study, which will be complicated by the fact that this area cannot be reached via trails. To analyze the footprints, therefore, it will be necessary to use drones and other sophisticated techniques remote sensing.
