LONDON – A four-year-old girl has made a great discovery.
She walks with her father and pet along a beach in Wales and sees an extremely well-preserved dinosaur footprint that excites paleontologists worldwide.
Lily Wilder made the discovery near Bendricks Bay in south Wales, UK, and found a print that is thought to have been left 220 million years ago.
“It was on a low rock, shoulder height for Lily, and she just spotted it and said, ‘Look Daddy,'” her mother, Sally Wilder, 41, told NBC News by phone on Saturday.
“She’s really excited, but does not quite understand how wonderful it is,” said Sally, an engineer. In addition, her husband took photos on the beach and later shared them with the family. It was Lily’s grandmother who encouraged them to contact local experts and fossil lovers for further investigation.
While it is impossible to determine exactly what kind of dinosaur left the 10 centimeter (3.9 inch) footprint, some facts are observable, Cindy Howells, Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum of Wales paleontology curator, told NBC News.
The footprint was probably made by a dinosaur that was about 75 inches long and 2.5 feet long, she said.
It would have been a slender animal with a tail that walked on its two hind legs and actively hunted other small animals and insects, she added. The footprint of the monster is known as a ‘grallator’ and can help scientists determine more about how dinosaurs run.
“It’s brilliant,” Howells told NBC News.
“It’s a great preservation … You can see every detail of the muscles and where the joints are in the foot.”
It is likely that Wales and many other land masses have historically had dinosaurs around them, Howells said. Unfortunately, there are no fossilized bones that match the pressure, she said, but similar footprints have been found in the United States, which are known to have been made by the dinosaur ‘coelophysis’.
“We have not even found a fraction of the total species of dinosaurs yet,” Howells said, adding that the print Lily found provides a very useful “clue.”
Download the NBC News app for news and politics
The Welsh beach is protected as a site of special scientific interest, and the preserved fossil has now been safely removed. It will soon be to the Cardiff National Museum for future generations to enjoy and for scientists to study, the museum said in a statement.
The museum, which is currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, said that once it reopens, Lily and her school class will be invited to view the article and list her name as an official ‘finder’.
Lily, who loves dinosaur TV shows and has a collection of toys and models, told NBC News the T-Rex was her favorite.
While playing with her little brother, George (1), Lily’s mother said she encouraged parents who restrict coronavirus closures to take their children for walks in nature, where it is safe.
“We’re going to keep encouraging people to explore the outdoors,” Sally said. “It’s great because it gets them really interested and the whole family can learn together.”
