URL: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dinosaur-footprints-italian-alps-2732685
Scientists have now confirmed that Della Ferrera has uncovered the largest dinosaur track site in the Alps. The footprints date back 200 million years to the late stages of the Triassic Period, a time when the Italian region of Lombardy had a tropical climate and bordered the Tethys Ocean with tidal flats stretching for hundreds of kilometers. Over the course of millions of years, the same tectonic forces that lifted the Alps tilted this ancient sedimentary layer upright.
Roughly 90 percent of the tracks belong to prosauropods, a group of robust, long-necked herbivores who were ancestors of the brontosaurus. Researchers have compared the section of footprints to reading the pages of a book of stone with initial investigations carried out in late autumn already offering insights into the dinosaurs’ behavior.
Most straightforwardly, the tracks can indicate the manner and speed in which the animals walked. In some places, tracks of varying sizes run in parallel suggesting families moving together, possibly on migration or in search of food. In others, the tracks gather together and form groupings, an assembly that has rarely been found across Triassic period discoveries.