Apulia

Discovered in 1999 by Professor Umberto Nicosia and his collaborators near Altamura, the Cava Pontrelli site contains approximately 26,000 footprints and numerous trackways, making it probably the location with the highest concentration of dinosaur tracks in the world.

Analysis of the tracks has made it possible to establish a new ichnogenus, Apulosauripus and a new ichnospecies, Apulosauripus fredericianus. In palaeontology, the prefix ichno- (from the Greek "ἴχνος," meaning trace) is used precisely to describe the behaviour of organisms based solely on fossilised traces.

Thanks to the good preservation of various anatomical features, the Apulosauripus footprints are believed to have been left by an ornithopod dinosaur of the Hadrosauridae Family, commonly known as "duck-billed dinosaurs." The quarry also contains trackways attributable to nodosaurids, armoured dinosaurs equipped with osteoderms covering much of their bodies.

The importance of Cava Pontrelli goes beyond its appeal and uniqueness: until recently, it was believed that, during the Late Cretaceous, the Italian peninsula was entirely submerged by the sea. The discovery of these tracks instead demonstrated the presence of shallow-sea continental platforms, which allowed large terrestrial reptiles to move from one area to another. This evidence gives us a much clearer picture of the palaeogeography of "Italy" 80 million years ago.