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A blond girl in brains motions toward dino footprints on the beach

Tegan and Claire Jones were looking for fossils on the beach when they found dinosaur footprints. Claire Jones
  • A 10-year-old found 220-million-year-old dinosaur tracks in Wales while fossil hunting.
  • Tegan Jones and her mother found the tracks, which hadn’t been seen in over 140 years.
  • An expert thinks a type of long-necked dinosaur, called Camelotia, may have left the prints.

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You’ve probably left many footprints in mud and sand but the chances they still exist are pretty slim. The same is true for dinosaurs, which is why a 10-year-old’s discovery of a set of 220-million-year-old tracks is pretty remarkable.

Tegan Jones was looking for fossils last year with her mother, Claire Jones, when she spotted the tracks.

Others have found dinosaur footprints in this area of Wales. So, the mother-daughter duo thought the tracks were already well-known when they stumbled upon them.

It wasn’t until they got home and compared their photos to others’ online that they realized the tracks were different.

“It was amazing to think that we had discovered something from 220 million years ago,” Claire Jones told Business Insider via email.

The Joneses thought they were looking at an already discovered set of prints.

This area of Wales has other dinosaur fossils, including footprints. Cindy Howells

The Joneses live about an hour from the beach near Penarth in South Wales, which is known for being rich in fossils from the Jurassic period, around 200 to 145 million years ago.

They knew a set of dinosaur prints had previously been found nearby, so the pair decided to look for them. That’s when they discovered the new tracks.

Online pictures of previously found dino tracks were in grayish rocks. But the Joneses’ photos of the new-found tracks were in red rocks. That’s when they realized they might have found something new.

Wales has a long history of people finding dinosaur tracks.

The dinosaur footprints were first seen in the late 19th century. Geography Photos/Getty Images

The Joneses are the first to see these prints in over 140 years, Howells said.

Geologists in the late 19th century published a paper on a series of tracks in a similar location, which Howells suspects was the same set that the Joneses came upon.

“No one has seen them since,” Howells said via email.

Tegan’s find has attracted a lot of attention.

Tegan and Claire Jones couldn’t believe they found dinosaur footprints. Cindy Howells

It wasn’t just Howells who was excited by Tegan’s rediscovery of the prints. An episode of the BBC show “Our Lives” featured the family and their discovery.

“It has been very surreal, amazing, and unbelievable,” Claire Jones said about the whole experience.

Howells said she and her colleagues will potentially write a paper on the finding to document the prints’ existence.

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