Italian paleontologists have discovered thousands of dinosaur footprints on a nearly vertical rock wall more than 2,000 meters above sea level in Stelvio National Park, a discovery that, according to them, is among the richest sites in the world for the Triassic period.
The footprints, some up to 40 centimeters wide and bearing claw marks, stretch for around five kilometers in the high-altitude glacial valley of Fraele, near Bormio, one of the venues for the 2026 Winter Olympics, in northern Lombardy.
“This is one of the oldest and largest footprint sites in Italy, and one of the most spectacular I have seen in 35 years,” said Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at Milan’s Natural History Museum, at a press conference Tuesday at the headquarters of the Lombardy Region.
Experts believe the footprints were left by herds of long-necked herbivores, probably plateosaurs, more than 200 million years ago, when the area was a warm lagoon, ideal for dinosaurs to roam the beaches, leaving tracks in the mud near the water.
“The footprints were printed when the sediments were still soft, on the broad tidal flats that surrounded the Tethys Ocean,” said Fabio Massimo Petti, an ichnologist at the MUSE museum in Trento, who was participating in the same press conference.
“The mud, now transformed into rock, has allowed the preservation of notable anatomical details of the feet, such as toe impressions and even claws,” Petti added.
As the African plate gradually moved north, closing and drying the Tethys Ocean, the sedimentary rocks that formed the sea floor were folded, creating the Alps.
Fossilized dinosaur tracks shifted from a horizontal to a vertical position on a mountainside, spotted by a wildlife photographer in September while chasing deer and bearded vultures, experts said.
“Natural sciences offer the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games an unexpected and precious gift from remote eras,” Giovanni Malagò, president of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Organizing Committee, told reporters.
The area cannot be accessed by trails, so drones and remote sensing technologies will have to be used to study it.
