Girl, 4, discovers dinosaur footprint on Welsh beach

Feb. 2 (UPI) -- A dinosaur footprint found by a 4-year-old girl walking with her family at a Welsh beach is now headed to a museum, where it will be displayed alongside a plaque identifying its discoverer.

Richard Wilder said his family was walking Jan. 23 on Bendricks Bay beach in south Wales when his 4-year-old daughter, Lily, called his attention to a fossilized rock.

Wilder said the rock contained what the family believed to be a dinosaur footprint.

"It was almost too good to be true, how realistic it was. It was almost like someone had etched into the rock," Wilder told CBC News.

The family's Facebook post with photos of the rock came to the attention of the National Museum Wales, which retrieved the fossil from the beach.

"This fossilized dinosaur footprint from 220 million years ago is one of the best-preserved examples from anywhere in the U.K. and will really aid paleontologists to get a better idea about how these early dinosaurs walked," Cindy Howells, curator at the Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum of Wales Paleontology, said in a statement.

The museum said experts have not identified the species of dinosaur that made the footprint, but it is believed to have been about 2 1/2 feet tall.

The museum said fossil will be put on display soon along with a plaque identifying Lily as the person who discovered it.