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A woman hike in the Italian Alps come across a fragment of a 280 million - yr - old ecosystem , complete with footprints , works fogy and even the imprints of raindrop , researchers have confirmed .
Claudia Steffensen was walk behind her husband in the Valtellina Orobie Mountains Park in Lombardy in 2023 when she stepped on a rock that looked like a slab of cement , The Guardian reported . " I then noticed these strange rotary excogitation with rippled wrinkle , " Steffensen told the newspaper . " I took a close look and realized they were footprint . "
Reconstruction of a lake scene 280 million years ago during the Permian period.
scientist analyzed the rock and found that the footprints belong to a prehistoric reptile , raising questions about what other clues beyond Steffensen ’s " John Rock zero " were veil in these Alpine high .
expert subsequently jaw the site multiple metre and found grounds of an entire ecosystem date back to the Permian period ( 299 million to 252 million years ago ) . The Permian was characterized by a tight - warm mood and culminate in anextinction result known as the " Great Dying,“which wiped out 90 % of Earth ’s species .
Traces of this ecosystem consist of fossilized footprints from reptiles , amphibious aircraft , insects and arthropods that often ordinate to form " tracks , " according to a translatedstatement . Alongside these rails , researchers found ancient traces of seed , leaves and stems , as well as imprint of raindrops and waves that lap at the shore of a prehistoric lake . Evidence of this ancient ecosystem was find up to 9,850 fundament ( 3,000 beat ) gamy in the mountain and down in the bottom of valleys , where landslip have deposited fossil - bearing rocks over the aeon .
A large boulder with fossilized footprints of amphibians and reptiles aligned to form tracks.
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The ecosystem , which is captured in fine - grained sandstone , owes its awing preservation to its past law of proximity to body of water . " The footprints were made when these sandstone and shales were still Baroness Dudevant and mud soaked in water supply at margins of river and lakes , which sporadically , according to the time of year , dried up,“Ausonio Ronchi , a fossilist at the University of Pavia in Italy who examined the dodo , articulate in the statement . " The summertime sun , drying out those surfaces , hardened them to the point that the return of new water system did not erase the footprints but , on the contrary , covered them with new clay , form a protective layer . "
The fine grain of this gumption and mud preserve the finest details , including nipper Mark and patterns from the underbellies of animals , according to the program line . The research worker say the imprints come from at least five different animal species , some of which may have reached the size of modern - solar day Komodo dragon ( Varanus komodoensis ) , grow to between 6.5 and 10 foot ( 2 to 3 m ) long .
Researchers move fossils onto spongy white material for transportation on Oct. 21, 2024.
" At that time , dinosaur did not yet exist , but the animals responsible for the largest footprint found here must still have been of a considerable size,“Cristiano Dal Sasso , a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Milan who was the first expert adjoin about the discovery , said in the statement .
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The fossils offer a window into a fascinating , long - gone world whose dweller work extinct at the end of the Permian — but they can also teach us about the time we live in now , the researchers said in the statement .
Many of the prehistorical depression unveil would have remained hidden were it not forclimate change , which is apace slim the ice and blow cover song in the Alps . " These fogy … testify to a distant geologic menstruum , but with a globular warming vogue completely like to that of today , " the researcher tell . " The past has a sight to teach us about what we take a chance getting the world into now . "
