Traces of ancient giants are found all over the world no less often than their bones. For example, paleontologists have previously studied dinosaur tracks in Great Britain dating back at least 200 million years. They were probably left by early sauropods.

Details of finding

• The publication states that one of the visitors accidentally noticed the tracks.
• These were several stone pits in the courtyard of a restaurant in Sichuan Province.
• Like the English tracks, these belong to the sauropods, the largest animals to walk on Earth. They walked the planet during the early Cretaceous period.
• The dinosaurs’ body length was probably about 8 meters.

Traces of ancient sauropods / Photo by CNN

Traces of ancient sauropods / Photo by CNN

• The tracks are well preserved, including that there is a poultry farm at this location: dirt and sand from production has protected the fossils from erosion and weathering.
• They were acquitted when the restaurant opened about a year ago.
• The owner liked the natural look of the rough stone, so instead of flattening it with cement, he left it untouched.

Traces of dinosaurs are regularly found in Sichuan, but not all fossils experts have time to get to them: they usually do not have more than 48 hours to work with the object, because the landowners are carrying out construction work there. Jurassic dinosaur fossils are often found in the area, but the Cretaceous is much less represented, although the Cretaceous period was when “dinosaurs really flourished,” said Lida Xin, a paleontologist and associate professor at the University of Earth Sciences of China.