ඩයිනසෝර පා සටහන් 400ක් යුනාන් වලින් හමුවේ

Over 400 dinosaur footprints found in Yunnan

Paleontologists have discovered more than 400 dinosaur footprints, dating back 120 million years to the early Cretaceous period, in the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The discovery began in May this year, thanks to the keen eyes of two local villagers who were herding sheep in the mountains. They stumbled upon the dinosaur footprint fossils and alerted the Lufeng Municipal Natural Resources Bureau.

"We found two large stone pits. We have learned about these stone pits before. We know they are dinosaur footprints. Later we looked around again and saw that there were 20 to 30 of them, large and small," said Yang Taiyong, one of the villagers

The fossils were found in the mountains in Konglongshan Town, Lufeng City. On-site determination has indicated that the rock strata containing the dinosaur footprints date back approximately 120 million years.

As the scope of surveys continues to expand, more and more dinosaur footprint fossils continued to be discovered. As of Monday, researchers had discovered more than 400 dinosaur footprint fossils in the area.

"The footprint fossils can be classified into three types: large-sized footprints resembling those of sauropods, such as diplodocuses; footprints resembling those of tyrannosaurs; and footprints possibly belonging to stegosaurs or ankylosaurs," said Wang Tao, head of the dinosaur fossil protection and research center of Lufeng.

Konglongshan Town, whose name translates to "dinosaur mountain," is a concentrated discovery area for fossilized dinosaur footprints.

However, a discovery of such scale and variety is unprecedented, indicating the extensive presence of a diverse dinosaur population in the Lufeng area during the early Cretaceous period, according to one of the researchers.

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