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A fascinating world of fossilized animal fossils, skin pigments, plants, and seeds found in the melting snow of the Italian Alps.
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Experts say that the world is now lost to 280 million years ago.
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This place was found by a hiker more than 5,500 meters above sea level.
Each species or species of animal, even on its own, is a great opportunity to look into the history of our country and its living creatures. So how important is the fossilized ecosystem as a whole?
Spoiler alert: a lot.
Scientists are learning that in real time after finding the entire Paleozoic-era ecosystem, which was once hidden under ice and glaciers. The paleontological site—located in the Orobie Valtellinesi Park in the Italian Alps—is so well preserved that researchers have found everything from footprints of wild animals and reptiles to plant remains and seeds to skin stains and water droplets.
“The smooth seeds of the soil, now crushed, have allowed the preservation of some surprising features, such as the condition of the fingers and the skin of the abdomen of some animals,” said Lorenzo Marchetti, plant specialist at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution. and Biodiversity in Berlin, he said in a translated speech. “The shape and size of the fossils show the quality of preservation and the amazing paleo-biodiversity, perhaps even higher than that observed in other departments of the same geological age.”
Paleontologists have found thin fingerprints, long and curved tail tracks, and even tidal waves on the shores of ancient lakes. The site remained completely hidden (and well-preserved) for millennia—until, that is, the current rapidly warming climate caused the ice and snow to melt. By 2023, enough of that cover had melted for traveler Claudia Steffensen to see some strange colors on the rocks.
“It was the hottest day last summer,” Steffensen told reporters Guardian, “and we wanted to escape the heat, so we went to the mountains. When we were going back down, we had to walk carefully on the road.” It was then that he saw the stone that hit him strangely, as it “looked like a cement stone. Then I saw these strange circular designs with wavy lines. I looked carefully and saw that they were feet.”
He took the photographs and sent them to Elio Della Ferrera, his naturalist friend who passed the pictures on to the Natural History Museum of Milan. Since then, a team of researchers has photographed and created hundreds of fossils at the site. still growing on the vertical walls of the area and in the accumulation of soil on the ground, sometimes as high as 10,000 meters above sea level.
“The dinosaurs did not exist at that time, but the authors of the largest footprints found here must have been still large in size,” Cristiano Dal Sasso, a historian at the school.
Natural History Museum of Milan, he said in a statement. He added that he believes the site contains examples of footprints from five different animal species.
“The imprinted processes occurred when the sandstones and clays were still soaked in water,” Ausonio Ronchi, an expert in sedimentology at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pavia, said in a statement. “The summer sun, drying those places, hardened them so that the return of the new water did not erase the feet but, on the contrary, covered them with new soil creating a protective pole.”
Animal species are associated with fossilized leaves, stem fragments, and seeds.
“The Orobic site is proving to be a great open laboratory,” Massimo Merati, the park’s director, said in a statement. Teams are now using drones and helicopters to map fossils on vertical walls and recover other finds in unstable terrain, respectively—especially since transporting rocks is impossible without aircraft. The first stone Steffensen stepped on, which contained the footprints of a prehistoric reptile, was part of the first to be recovered by the wind in October.
Stefano Rossi, head of the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape of the region, said in a statement that the fossil deposit can be “an important subject of study by turning itself into a training center for researchers and students.”
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