BBC News Online: Sci/Tech

Out of Africa

Fossil tracks found in Southern Italy suggest the Italian peninsular was connected to Northern Africa during the reign of the dinosaurs.

A hundred and thirty million years ago a group of dinosaurs walked across a muddy plain, leaving a trail of sixty massive footprints behind them.

The tracks solidified into rock - and have just been uncovered by a team of geologists from the University of Ferrara in Italy.

Some of the footprints have been identified as belonging to an Iguanadon, a nine metre long, five-tonne dinosaur.

The herbivorous creature is similar to dinosaurs that lived in North Africa - and this suggests that Southern Italy was connected to Africa a hundred and thirty million years ago.

Geological evidence supports the idea that Italy and north Africa are made from the same rocks - but up to now it was thought that the Italy of today was just a group of islands off the African coast.

But giant dinosaurs like the Iguanadon could not have survived on small islands - so the footprints are strong evidence that Italy was part of continental Africa.