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A handful of Olympians will compete where giants once roamed.
A wildlife photographer in Italy chanced upon one of the oldest and largest known collection of dinosaur footprints in a national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Bormio, officials said Tuesday. The entrance to the park where the prints were discovered is about a kilometer from where the men’s alpine skiing will be held.
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In this photograph taken in September 2025 and released on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, by Stelvio National Park, prosauropod footprints from the Late Triassic 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 were 33 feet long and weighed up to four tons, similar to a Plateosaurus, said paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso of the Milan Natural History Museum.
“This time reality really surpasses imagination,” added Dal Sasso.
Wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera made the discovery in the Stelvio National Park near the Swiss border in September. The site is considered to be a prehistoric coastal area that has never before yielded dinosaur tracks, according to experts.
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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 in shade. Dal Sasso said, adding that the footprints were a little hard to spot without a very strong lens.
“The big surprise was not so much in discovering the footprints, but in discovering such a huge amount,” said Della Ferrera. “There are really tens of thousands of prints up there, more or less well preserved.”
Although there are currently no plans to make the footprints available to the public, Lombardy’s regional governor, Attilio Fontana, hailed the discovery as a “gift to the Olympics.”
Lombardy Governor Attilio Fontana attends a press conference in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, about a discovery of thousands of dinosaur tracks in the Lombardy region. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
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The Winter Olympics will take place from 6 to 22 February.
