A shocking discovery on a beach in Wales: 10-year-old girl discovers ancient dinosaur footprints dating back 200 million years (photo)

A ten-year-old girl named Tegan, while walking with her mother on the south coast of Wales, came across several dinosaur footprints that had been preserved in stone for 200 million years. The mother and daughter traveled from Pontardawe near Swansea to the Vale of Glamorgan in search of the fossils.

They ended up at a spot among the red siltstone cliffs along the coast that is known as a prehistoric hotspot. Every five years or so, footprints or bones are found there, and in 2014, a complete skeleton of a 201 million-year-old draconian, a carnivorous relative of the T-rex, was discovered, according to the Metro website.

But Tegan found not one, but five footprints spaced up to three-quarters of a meter apart, indicating the dinosaur's impressive size.

"We were just exploring the area, not hoping for any special finds. When we saw dinosaur-like footprints, my mom took a few photos and sent them by email to the museum," the girl says.

Although the exact species of dinosaur is yet to be confirmed, Cindy Howells, curator of paleontology at the National Museum of Wales, said the tracks are likely to be those of a camelotia, a large herbivore from the late Triassic period.

"These footprints are so large that they were probably left by a sauropodomorph, a type of dinosaur," the scientist explained, emphasizing the importance of this discovery.

Ten-year-old Tegan and her mother Claire are extremely happy that they were able to find these tracks.

"You can spend a lifetime looking for dinosaur tracks, so for this to happen to Tegan at this age is just incredible. To realize that you're walking on the same beach where a huge prehistoric creature walked hundreds of millions of years ago is amazing," Claire said.

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