Thousands of dinosaur footprints found near Winter Olympics venue in Italy

A wildlife photographer stumbled upon one of the oldest and largest known collections of dinosaur footprints, dating back about 210 million years to the Triassic Period, high in an Italian national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic venue of Bormio, officials announced Tuesday

A wildlife photographer stumbled upon one of the oldest and largest known collections of dinosaur footprints, dating back about 210 million years to the Triassic Period, high in an Italian national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympic venue of Bormio, officials announced Tuesday.

The discovery in the Stelvio National Park was striking for the sheer number of footprints, estimated at as many as 20,000 over some three miles, and the location near the Swiss border, once a prehistoric coastal area, that has never previously yielded dinosaur tracks, experts said.

“This time reality really surpasses fantasy,’’ said Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at Milan’s Natural History Museum, who received the first call from wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera after making the discovery.

Park officials in front of prosauropod footprints dating back to the Late Triassic at Stelvio National Park. Museo di Storia Naturale di MilanoThe dinosaur prints are believed to have been made by long-necked bipedal herbivores that were up to 33 feet long, weighing up to four tons, similar to a Plateosaurus, Dal Sasso said. Some of the tracks were 40 centimeters wide, with visible claws.

The footprints indicated that the dinosaurs traveled in packs and they sometimes stopped in circular formations, possibly as a protective measure.