Woman Stumbles Upon a 280-Million-Year-Old Lost World While Trekking With Her Husband

The striking discovery included fossils of prehistoric reptiles, amphibians, plants, seeds, waves, and even raindrops.

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO

Woman going on a hike (Representative Cover Image Source: Pexels | Sergei A)

It was a very hot day in summer and Claudia Steffensen, from Lovero, a village in Sondrio province, badly wanted to escape the heat. They decided to go on a hike in the Italian Alps. They immersed themselves in scenic vistas of jagged limestone formations, rugged cliffs, white marble towers, chestnut woods, hollow abysses, and majestic peaks. But when Claudia stopped and rested her feet on a rock, something caught her attention. The rock featured peculiarly “strange designs.” Little did she know that her momentary discovery would turn this rock into precious evidence for avid archaeologists. Coming straight out of the plot of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, she had accidentally discovered the footprint of a prehistoric reptile. And some ancient raindrops too, reported The Guardian.

Hiker standing at a rocky cliff in the mountains (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Marek Piwnicki)

“I put my foot on a rock, which struck me as odd as it seemed more like a slab of cement. I then noticed these strange circular designs with wavy lines. I took a closer look and realized they were footprints,” Claudia told The Guardian. After snapping some photos of these strange patterns, Claudia sent them to her friend, Elio Della Ferrera, a nature photographer. Elio passed on the photos to his friend, Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Milan. Cristiano shared them with his expert friends. And so, a domino of investigations began.

Hiker flashes light on some rocks in the mountains (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Marek Piwnicki)

The investigations soon revealed that the strange design on the rock was indeed footprints- the footprints that belonged to a 280-million-year-old reptile. This period was the age immediately prior to dinosaurs, according to the outlet. The researchers eventually mapped an area of the mountains and discovered that there were hundreds of other footprints punctuated across the trail, including those of ancient reptiles, amphibians, and insects.

Dinosaurs roaming in lush wilderness (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Mike Bird)

“Dinosaurs did not yet exist, but the authors of the largest footprints must still have been of a considerable size – up to 2-3 meters long,” Cristiano said in a statement translated by The Guardian. There weren’t just footprints, but also imprints of plants, seeds, fingernails, and belly skin of animals, waves that lapped on the shores of ancient lakes, and even raindrops. If someone could rewind the present day to millions of years ago, they’d probably find an entire ecosystem lurking in these mountains quivering with humungous reptiles. Some archaeologists also found imprints of a crocodile-like reptile in the Alps. What Claudia accidentally discovered in the Ambria Valley sparked a cesspool of studies that won’t conclude anytime soon.

A fossilized animal preserved in a rock for several years. (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Marcus Lange)

Doriano Codega, president of the Valtellina Orobie Nature Park, said that her discovery isn’t just a striking revelation but also a by-product of global warming. When these imprints were made, the rocks were still wet with water and mud. Eventually, they got blanketed in layers of clay, silt, and sand. But as temperatures rose, the blazing sun parched these out, hardening them into fossils. “The exceptional thing was the altitude – these relics were found at very high levels and were very well preserved. This is an area subjected to landslides, so there were also rock detachments that brought to light these fossils. This is a very important paleontological discovery,” he added.