Experts have discovered footprints of a dinosaur on a beach at Penarth in Cardiff, Wales. The footprints are believed to have been made more than 200 million years ago.

The palaeontologists at London’s Natural History Museum said the footprints are thought to belong to sauropod or sauropod relative. 

The footprints were first reported to the museum by a member of public in 2020. Experts initially thought that this was the result of geological processes. But, it has now been suggested that they could be dinosaur tracks.

Dr. Susannah Maidment, a palaeontologist who was involved in the research, said that it has been revealed that early sauropods were living in Britain at the time, as their bones have been found in rocks in Somerset dating back to the same period.  

Dr Maidment and her team found that the tracks have toe impressions, which led them to the conclusion that the tracks are in fact footprints.  

“We believed the impressions we saw at Penarth were consistently spaced to suggest an animal walking. We also saw displacement rims where mud had been pushed up. These structures are characteristic of active movement through the soft ground,” CNN quoted her saying. 

Prof Paul Barrett, who researches dinosaurs at the Museum, says that the number of footprints makes it possible the site was a place where sauropods gathered.  

Scientists discover preserved dinosaur embryo  

On December 23, scientists announced the discovery of an exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo in Ganzhou, southern China that dates back at least 66 million years ago. 

 The fossil belonged to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur, which the researchers dubbed “Baby Yingliang.” 

“It is one of the best dinosaur embryos ever found in history,” University of Birmingham researcher Fion Waisum Ma, who co-authored a paper in the journal iScience, told AFP. 

Ma and colleagues found Baby Yingliang’s head lay below its body, with the feet on either side and back curled — a posture that was previously unseen in dinosaurs, but similar to modern birds. 

In birds, the behavior is controlled by the central nervous system and called “tucking.” Chicks preparing to hatch tuck their head under their right wing in order to stabilize the head while they crack the shell with their beak.  

Embryos that fail to tuck have a higher chance of death from an unsuccessful hatching. 



source https://www.samaa.tv/news/2022/01/dinosaur-footprint-discovered-on-a-beach-in-wales/