Lily Wilder
My dear dino friends do you remember that famous quote of Chef Gusteau from the Pixar animation movie Ratatouille 🐀? “Anyone can cook”. And it looks like its proving true in paleontology as well, where one can now say, “Anyone can discover”.
Believe me, I am not cooking this up. A 4 year old girl from South Wales, UK, made this discovery very playfully while taking a stroll at a beach 🏖️ with her pet dog (bet the dog 🐕 too helped her sniff this out). And what Lily Wilder found has delighted the dino lovers world over.
Lily found a very well preserved dinosaur footprint 🐾 that is 220 million years old. The 10cm long foot print likely belonged to a dinosaur that was about 75cm (about 2.5 feet) tall and 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) long, and it may have had a tail as well (possibly a Grallator?).
The fossil will soon be moved to the National Museum at Cardiff (capital city of Wales), and Lily (who’s favorite dinosaur is a T-Rex) would be listed as its finder. Isn’t that fabulous!
Many discoveries and even inventions had happened by accident, but that doesn’t make them less important. So please do not discount this discovery because it was made by a tiny tot. May be someday I will also be able to help discover a new dino species too.
With my fingers crossed, I cannot help but close this post by saying this, “Not everyone can become a great paleontologist, but a great paleontologist can come from anywhere”. Anton Ego might agree, do you? 🙂
