Photographer Discovers Thousands of Dinosaur Footprints in National Park

A photographer discovered thousands of dinosaur footprints dating back around 210 million years while taking pictures of deer in an Italian national park.

Wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferra stumbled upon one of the oldest and largest known collections of dinosaur footprints in the Stelvio National Park in Northern Italy. The footprints date to the Triassic Period, around 210 million years ago.

According to Italian officials, Della Ferra had set out in September to photograph deer and vultures in Stelvio National Park when he noticed unusual markings on a steep, vertical rock wall nearly 2,000 feet above the nearest road. The site lies between about 7,900 and 9,200 feet above sea level on a north-facing wall that is largely shaded, a factor that made the footprints difficult to detect without a powerful camera lens.

Della Ferra said something strange caught his eye, and he scaled a vertical rock wall with some difficulty to get a closer look. He then spotted the dinosaur footprints stretching hundreds of feet on a vertical mountain wall in the park.

After recognizing the potential significance of the find, Della Ferrera contacted Cristiano Dal Sasso, a palaeontologist of Milan’s Natural History Museum. Dal Sasso then assembled a team of Italian experts to investigate and document the site. Experts say the discovery is notable both for the scale of the tracksite and its location. As many as 20,000 individual footprints have been identified across roughly three miles of rock in an area that was once a prehistoric coastal environment but had not previously produced dinosaur tracks.

“This time reality really surpasses fantasy,” Dal Sasso says in a press release.

The palaeontologist adds that the photographer’s extraordinary discovery is “an immense scientific heritage.”

Milan’s Natural History Museum has released multiple images of the footprints, now being referred to as the “valley of dinosaurs” on social media. The tracks are believed to have been made by long-necked, bipedal herbivorous dinosaurs up to 33 feet long and weighing as much as four tons, similar to Plateosaurus. During the Triassic Period, between about 250 and 201 million years ago, the rock wall would have been a tidal flat, before later becoming part of the Alpine chain. Some of the footprints measure up to 15.7 inches wide and include visible claw marks. Researchers say the track patterns suggest the dinosaurs moved in groups and at times gathered in circular formations, possibly as a protective behavior.

Image credits: Header photo by Elio Della Ferrera / PaleoStelvio Archive.