Winter Olympics venue near site of 20,000 dinosaur footprints, officials say

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A handful of Olympic participants will be competing where giants once roamed.

A wildlife photographer in Italy happened to come upon one of the oldest and largest known collection of dinosaur footprints at a national park near the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics venue of Bormio, officials said Tuesday. The entrance to the park, where the prints were discovered, is located about a mile from where the Men’s Alpine skiing will be held.

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In this photograph taken in September 2025 and released Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, by Stelvio National Park,  Late Triassic prosauropod footprints 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 made by long-necked bipedal herbivores that were 33 feet long, weighing up to four tons, similar to a Plateosaurus, Milan Natural History Museum paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso said.

"This time reality really surpasses fantasy," Dal Sasso added.

Wildlife photographer Elio Della Ferrera made the discovery at Stelvio National Park near the Swiss border in September. The spot is considered to be a prehistoric coastal area that has never previously yielded dinosaur tracks, according to experts.

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This photograph, taken in September 2025 and released Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, by Stelvio National Park, shows a Late Triassic prosauropod footprint discovered in the Fraele Valley in northern Italy. (Elio Della Ferrara/Stelvio