Researchers find dinosaur footprints in a Chinese restaurant Sciences

Researchers at the University of China University of Earth Sciences have found footprints of one of the largest dinosaur species in the outdoor yard of a restaurant in the country. The enterprise is located in Leshan City, Sichuan Province.

The footprints are from two species of sauropods, a species that can be up to 8 meters long and inhabited the Earth about 100 million years ago, at the beginning of the period known to scientists as the Cretaceous.

The researchers received information from a customer who was having dinner at the restaurant and noticed a few different bumps. He reached out to Lida Xing, a paleontologist at the Chinese University, and conducted an investigation with other colleagues.

According to Xing, the discovery was only possible after the team used a 3D scanner to analyze the footprints.

The restaurant in question is built where a farm used to be. The footprints were buried by layers of dirt and sand, which helped protect these logs from erosion.

The facility opened a year ago, but after loving the natural look of the place, the owner chose not to make many changes, such as not leveling the irregular area where the footprints were found.

“When we went there, we found that the footprints were very deep and quite obvious, but no one thought about that possibility,” the paleontologist said in an interview with CNN.

Lida explained that due to China’s rapid urban development in recent decades, paleontological studies are facing more and more obstacles.

“It is rare to find fossils in the city, because they are all covered with buildings,” he said, noting that this discovery may represent another evidence in the diversity of dinosaurs that inhabited that area.

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