A woman hiking along the Italian Alps with her husband stumbled across the discovery of a lifetime when she found a set of 280 million-year-old footprints, the first trace of an ancient prehistoric ecosystem.

Hikers were responsible for the discovery of what scientists believe to be a prehistoric ecosystem. The first sign of the ecosystem discovered by the hikers were footprints.

An individual plant or animal fossil is, even by itself, a massive chance to look into the history of our world and its living creatures. So how significant is a whole fossilized

A hiker in the Alps discovers 280-million-year-old fossilized tracks, revealing a lost prehistoric ecosystem and offering insights into climate change and ancient life forms.