Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
A hiker in the Italian Alps stumbled upon a prehistoric treasure—280-million-year-old footprints of reptiles, amphibians, and insects, preserved in stunning detail. This accidental discovery reshaped our understanding of ancient ecosystems.
Claudia Steffensen spotted strange patterns on gray rock in Lombardy’s Valtellina Orobie Mountains. Scientists later confirmed these were fossilized tracks of five prehistoric species from the Permian Period.
Credit: Elio Della Ferrera, © Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape provinces of Como, Lecco, Monza-Brianza, Pavia, Sondrio and Varese
Further exploration uncovered hundreds of fossilized footprints, claw marks, and belly skin impressions. Researchers credited water-soaked sand and mud for preserving these relics so well.
Credit: Elio Della Ferrera, © Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape provinces of Como, Lecco, Monza-Brianza, Pavia, Sondrio and Varese
The fossils tell the tale of a world on the brink. During the Permian Period, rapid global warming led to a mass extinction that wiped out 90% of Earth's species, eerily paralleling today’s climate crisis.
Ironically, the melting snow from modern-day global warming exposed these ancient treasures, hidden at altitudes as high as 10,000 feet for millennia.
The fossils revealed imprints of seeds, leaves, raindrops, and waves alongside intricate animal tracks, including fingernail and belly-skin impressions—a level of preservation rarely seen.
Credit: Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano
Paleontologist Ausonio Ronchi explained how dried riverbeds hardened under the summer sun, protecting the footprints when water returned, encasing them in layers of clay.
“These fossils testify to a distant period with warming trends similar to today,” researchers warned, pointing to lessons from history as we face our own climate challenges.
The Alps have lost 30-40% of their glacier surface since 1850 due to human-driven climate change, further exposing ancient secrets buried beneath the ice.