10-year-old finds dinosaur footprints on beach

Tegan spotted spotted five huge footprints

Have you been to the beach this summer holidays?

Maybe you did some treasure hunting whilst you were there, and found some shells, or even a fossil?

Well, 10-year-old Tegan's trip to the beach in South Wales left her walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

As she spotted five huge footprints that experts believe belonged to a Camelotia dinosaur that lived there more than 200 million years ago.

Her mum took photos of the findings to send to the museum

Palaeontologists believe that the enormous footprints that Tegan found were made back in the late Triassic period, around 200 million years ago.

The footprints are 75cm apart and are consistent with a left foot, a right foot and then a left and another right.

Experts are now working to get the findings verified.

Tegan said: "It was so cool and exciting. We were just out looking to see what we could find, we didn't think we'd find anything.

"We found these big holes that looked like dinosaur footprints, so mum took some pictures, emailed the museum and it was from a long-necked dinosaur."

What is a Camelotia dinosaur?

Illustrations of what a Camelotia may have looked like are rare, but experts think it closely resembled the Massospondylus, shown here

Cindy Howells, a top dinosaur in the part of the UK where the footprints were discovered, believes that the footprint is from a Camelotia.

These long-necked dinos lived across parts of the Europe.

But, very little is known about this species compared to the knowledge experts have on other dinosaurs like triceratops and the mighty T-rex.

It is believed that the Camelotia were herbivorous and lived in the late Triassic period.

How palaeontologists think Wales might have looked during the late triassic period

Cindy said: "A camelotia would have stood about 3m (10ft) tall, 4-5m (13-16ft) long and is an early sauropodomorph with a relatively long neck, long tail and walked on two legs but could walk on all four when grazing for food."

She added:

"It's amazing as up until recently, we had so few dinosaur finds in Wales that we didn't think we had much in the way of dinosaurs here".

Great find Tegan!