Dinosaur footprints suggest Afro-Italian link

Scientists in a remote area of southern Italy have discovered a large number of dinosaur footprints which they say suggests the Italian peninsula was once joined to Africa.

The researchers from the University of Ferrara found sixty footprints which they believe were made by a large herd of iguanodons, which lived a-hundred-and-thirty million years ago and were five metres high and nine metres long.

Conventional theories suggest that what is now southern Italy was once an archipelago of small islands.

But the head of the team, Professor Alfonso Bosellini, said large numbers of dinosaurs of this size could not have existed on small islands.

He said the footprints were comparable to others already discovered in north Africa.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service