Italian paleontologists recently announced a significant discovery in the Stelvio National Park in the Alps: on a nearly vertical rock wall at an altitude of over 2,000 meters, thousands of well-preserved dinosaur footprints fossils were unearthed. Experts confirm that these footprints belong to the Triassic period over two hundred million years ago and are of a grand scale, being considered one of the most abundant sites of its kind in the world.
These astonishing fossil footprints are located in the high-altitude glacial valley of Valle di Fraele in northern Lombardy, near Bormio, one of the venues for the 2026 Winter Olympics. The large footprints extend approximately five kilometers.
Cristiano Dal Sasso, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Milan, stated at a press conference on Tuesday, December 16th, “This is one of the largest and oldest footprint sites in Italy and one of the most spectacular sites I have seen in my 35 years of research.” Some footprints are as wide as 40 centimeters, with claw marks clearly visible.
Giovanni Malagò, the chairman of the Milan-Cortina 2026 organizing committee, expressed, “Natural science has brought an unexpected and valuable gift from a distant era to the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.”
Experts speculate that these footprints were left by herds of prosauropod dinosaurs (long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs), most likely Plateosaurs.
More than two hundred million years ago, the area was not a high mountain but a warm lagoon. The footprints were formed in the environment of that time. Fabio Massimo Petti, an archaeologist at the MUSE museum of Trento, explained, “The footprints were imprinted in the broad tidal beaches surrounding the Tethys Ocean when the sediments were still soft.”
Petti added that these mud layers later solidified into rocks, preserving detailed anatomical features of dinosaur feet, including imprints of toes and even claws.
As the African plate gradually moved northward, the Tethys Ocean closed and dried up, causing the sedimentary rock layers of the seafloor to be compressed and folded, eventually forming the Alps. This resulted in the horizontal layers of dinosaur footprints transitioning into the nearly vertical mountain slope rock walls seen today.
This site was discovered by a wildlife photographer last September while chasing deer and bearded vultures. Due to the lack of trails in the area, future research will heavily rely on drones and remote sensing technology for surveying and analysis.
(Translated from Epoch Times, December 17, 2025)