A 10-year-old girl, Tegan, and her mother found five large dinosaur footprints in the red siltstone at Lavernock Point on the South Wales coast. Experts at the National Museum Wales attribute the prints to a sauropodomorph, most likely a Camelotia, with each print about 30 inches (76 cm) apart. The alternating left-right pattern indicates a walking gait. The discovery adds to a growing record of Welsh dinosaur finds and highlights the value of public reporting and museum collaboration.
10-Year-Old Girl Stumbles on Five Dinosaur Footprints at Welsh Beach — Likely Made by a Camelotia
A 10-year-old girl, Tegan, and her mother found five large dinosaur footprints in the red siltstone at Lavernock Point on the South Wales coast. Experts at the National Museum Wales attribute the prints to a sauropodomorph, most likely a Camelotia, with each print about 30 inches (76 cm) apart. The alternating left-right pattern indicates a walking gait. The discovery adds to a growing record of Welsh dinosaur finds and highlights the value of public reporting and museum collaboration.
12:12, 02.11.2025Science
10-Year-Old Girl Stumbles on Five Dinosaur Footprints at Welsh Beach
On a holiday walk near the Vale of Glamorgan, 10-year-old Tegan and her mother Claire expected to find shells — not dinosaur tracks. Instead, Tegan discovered five deep impressions in the red siltstone at Lavernock Point, each spaced roughly 30 inches (about 76 cm) apart in a clear left-right pattern.
Claire photographed the prints and sent the images to the National Museum Wales. Cindy Howells, the museum's paleontology curator, examined the photos and identified the impressions as large sauropodomorph tracks, most likely made by a Camelotia — a long-necked, herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Triassic. Specialists estimate the animal may have stood around 10 feet tall and measured roughly 16 feet long, and may have alternated between walking on two and four limbs.
The red siltstone at Lavernock Point has long been a productive site for prehistoric fossils. Over the past century the coastline has yielded multiple dinosaur footprints, and in 2014 two brothers discovered a near-complete Dracoraptor skeleton on the same stretch of beach. Howells says these finds are reshaping scientists' understanding of Welsh dinosaur history, showing a more continuous record of dinosaurs in the region over an estimated 15 million years.
“It was so cool and exciting,” Tegan told the BBC. “We were just out looking to see what we could find. We didn’t think we’d find anything.”
Howells added: “It’s quite a significant find — the buzz you get when someone contacts us with a definite dinosaur find.”
One clear sign the impressions are genuine tracks is the regular spacing and alternating sequence — left, right, left, right — consistent with a walking gait rather than random erosion. The discovery is a reminder that ordinary beach visits can still reveal extraordinary windows into deep time and that cooperation between the public and museums can produce meaningful scientific discoveries.
Why it matters: The find reinforces the scientific value of Wales' coastal exposures and contributes to a growing record of dinosaur activity in the region.