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A handful of Olympic participants will compete where giants once roamed.
A wildlife photographer in Italy stumbled upon one of the largest and oldest known collections of dinosaur footprints in a national park near Bormio, site of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026, officials said Tuesday. The entrance to the park, where the footprints were discovered, is located about a mile from where the men’s alpine ski event will take place.
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In this photograph taken in September 2025 and published on Tuesday, December 16, 2025 by Stelvio National Park, traces of Late Triassic prosauropods are seen on the slopes of the Fraeel Valley in northern Italy. (Elio Della Ferrera/Stelvio National Park via AP)
The estimated 20,000 footprints are believed to date back about 210 million years, to the Triassic period, and were made by long-necked bipedal herbivores that measured 33 feet long and weighed up to four tons, similar to a Plateosaurus, said Milan Museum of Natural History paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso.
“This time reality really surpasses fantasy,” Dal Sasso added.
Wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera made the discovery in Stelvio National Park, near the Swiss border, in September. According to experts, the place is considered a prehistoric coastal area where dinosaur footprints have never been found before.
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This photograph, taken in September 2025 and released on Tuesday, December 16, 2025 by Stelvio National Park, shows a Late Triassic prosauropod footprint discovered in the Fraele Valley in northern Italy. (Elio Della Ferrara/Stelvio National Park via AP)
The location is about 7,900-9,200 feet above sea level on a north-facing wall that is mostly shaded. Dal Sasso said, adding that the prints were a little difficult to detect without a very powerful lens.
“The big surprise was not so much discovering the prints, but discovering such a huge amount,” Della Ferrera said. “There are really tens of thousands of footprints up there, more or less well preserved.”
Although there are currently no plans to make the footprints accessible to the public, Lombardy regional governor Attilio Fontana hailed the discovery as a “gift to the Olympic Games.”
Lombardy region governor Attilio Fontana attends a news conference in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, regarding the discovery of thousands of dinosaur footprints in the Lombardy region. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
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The Winter Olympic Games will take place from February 6 to 22.
