Hiking, accidentally found a 280 million year old lost world

An Italian woman's accidental discovery has helped scientists unearth an entire ecosystem belonging to the world before the dinosaurs.

The "Lost World" was discovered by an Italian woman named Claudia Steffensen. She was hiking with her husband in the Valtellina Orobie Mountains Park in Lombardy, Italy, in the Alps, when she stepped on a rock that looked like a slab of cement.

'Then I noticed strange circular designs with wavy lines. I looked closer and realized they were footprints,' Ms Steffensen told The Guardian.

A fossil slab from the "lost world" is placed on a specialized white foam material before being taken to the lab - (Photo: Elio Della Ferrera).

Scientists visited the site and analyzed what has been dubbed "rock zero ," confirming that it bears the footprints of a prehistoric reptile.

And they started asking: What else is there in this area?

Several excavations were held thereafter and it was revealed that the lucky Italian woman had not simply found a stone tablet, but had opened the way to a lost world, older than the age of the dinosaurs.

It is a tropical lakeside ecosystem , with diverse fossil specimens dating back 280 million years, belonging to the Diapsid period.

According to Live Science, traces of this ecosystem include fossilized footprints from many species of reptiles, amphibians, insects and arthropods.

In addition, researchers found ancient traces of seeds, leaves and stems, and even traces of raindrops and waves lapping at the shores of an ancient lake.

This ancient ecosystem extends to altitudes of up to 3,000 m, on mountains and in valley floors, where landslides have deposited fossil-bearing rocks over the ages.

Preserved in fine sandstone, these specimens from this lost world are incredibly well preserved, making them a spectacular paleontological treasure trove.

According to paleontologist Ausonio Ronchi from the University of Pavia (Italy), they found stone slabs with claw marks and patterns from the lower abdomen of at least five different animal species.

"Dinosaurs did not yet exist at that time, but the animals that made the largest footprints found here must have been of considerable size," added paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso from the Milan Museum of Natural History.

More importantly, fossils from the Diplodocus are invaluable.

Because about 250 million years ago, as the Diapsid period ended and was replaced by the Triassic period, Earth experienced one of the worst mass extinctions in history, wiping out 90% of existing species.

The discovery in Italy is one of humanity's rare windows into that mysterious world.