Dinosaur footprints dating back 100 million years have been discovered in southwest China after a keen-eyed restaurant spotted them in a restaurant’s open-air patio.
Several stone pits at the restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan province, contained the footprints of two sauropods, a type of dinosaur that lived in the early Cretaceous period, said Lida Xing, a paleontologist and associate professor at the China University of Geosciences.
Xing’s team confirmed the discovery on Saturday (16) using a 3D scanner.
Sauropods, known for their long necks and tails, were the largest animals to ever walk the Earth. They could grow to the length of three school buses and were so heavy that the ground must have shaken as they walked.
The two sauropods that left the footprints likely measured about 8 meters in length, Xing said.
Although many dinosaur fossils from the Jurassic period have been discovered in Sichuan, far fewer fossils from the Cretaceous period have been found.
The Cretaceous period is when “dinosaurs really flourished,” Xing said, adding that “this discovery is really like a jigsaw puzzle, adding evidence to the Cretaceous period of Sichuan and the diversity of dinosaurs.”
China’s rapid development in recent decades has made paleontology — the study of ancient life through the fossil record — more difficult, Xing said.
“It’s rare to find fossils in the city, because they were all covered by buildings,” he said. His team intends to visit sites of potential finds within 48 hours of receiving a report, for fear that they “could be destroyed by the works in days”, he added.
Before it was a restaurant, the site was used as a chicken coop, with dinosaur footprints buried by layers of earth and sand — protecting them from erosion and weather damage.
The dirt was only removed about a year ago, when the restaurant opened. The owner liked the natural look of the jagged stone, so he left it untouched rather than leveling it with cement, Xing said.
As a result, “these footprints were well protected,” Xing said. “When we went there, we found that the footprints were very deep and quite obvious, but no one had thought (of the possibility).”
The restaurant owner has now cordoned off the site to prevent people from stepping into the pits and may build a shed to further protect the footprints, Xing said, adding that it was a welcome sign of greater scientific interest among the public.
“If it were 10 years ago, no one would send me pictures of suspicious dinosaurs (fossils or footprints),” he said. “But now, I get some from regular citizens and I confirm several dinosaur footprints every year.”
Source: CNN Brasil
