When ten-year-old Tegan went for a walk on the beach with her mother during the summer holidays, she had no idea that they would actually be following in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

The student discovered five giant footprints, which dinosaur experts believe are the traces of a Camelotia that was there more than 200 million years ago.

Paleontologists believe the footprints, which are up to 75 centimeters apart, are from a giant herbivore from the Late Triassic period, and efforts are currently underway to confirm this.

The curator of palaeontology at the National Museum Wales told Tegan and her mother Claire that she is “pretty sure these are real dinosaur prints”.

“We have five footprints and the distance between each one is about half a metre to three quarters of a metre,” Cindy Howells told the BBC. Our Life Program.

“These footprints are so large that they must belong to a species of dinosaur called Sauropodomorpha.”

Tegan discovered the monster on the coast of South Wales, near where her mother used to live.

“It was so cool and exciting,” said Tegan, who travelled from Pontadawe near Swansea to the Vale of Glamorgan in search of fossils.

“We were just out there looking to see what we could find, but we didn’t think we would find anything.

“We found big holes that looked like dinosaur footprints. My mom took some photos, emailed them to the museum and it was from a long-necked dinosaur.”

Claire emailed Cindy a few days after the discovery in the red siltstone at Lavernock Point between Cardiff and Barry, on a stretch of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast known as a prehistoric hotspot.

Cindy, a dinosaur expert who has worked in this part of the UK for 40 years, said she was convinced of the animals’ authenticity because of their regular walking pattern.

“If they were random holes, we would be cautious, but because we have a left foot, a right foot and then a left and a right … there is a consistent distance between them,” she said.

“This is a pretty significant find. The excitement you get when someone contacts us with a definitive dinosaur find is incredible.”

Claire was delighted that her suspicions were correct and gave new energy to her little daughter, a dinosaur hunter.

“It’s hard to comprehend that you’re walking on the same beach where a giant prehistoric animal lived hundreds of millions of years ago,” she said.

“You can spend your whole life looking for dinosaur treasures. The fact that this is happening to Tegan at this age is amazing.”

The most recent prehistoric find on this stretch of coast is an imprint of a dinosaur from the sauropod family, which includes Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, which are characterized by their very long neck, long tail, large body and small head.

Cindy believes the footprint came from a Camelotia, which was common in parts of Europe.

Little is known about them compared to what experts know about Stegosaurus, Triceratops and the mighty T-Rex, but they are believed to have walked on their forefeet and hind legs, been herbivorous and date from the Late Triassic period.

“We believe these prints are from a fairly large, herbivorous dinosaur,” Cindy added.

“We don’t have any bones here, but bones of similar dinosaurs have been found on the other side of the Bristol Channel.

“A Camelotia would have been about 3 m (4 ft) tall and 4-5 m (13-16 ft) long, and is an early sauropodomorph with a relatively long neck, long tail, and bipedal locomotion, but capable of walking on all fours when grazing.”

Cindy is fairly certain that “Tegan’s footprints” are linked to the first dinosaur prints found in nearby Porthcawl, Wales in 1879.

Bones were subsequently excavated at Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan before further footprints were found at The Bendricks near Barry and Sully – now a site of special scientific and palaeontological interest.

A The complete dinosaur skeleton was excavated in 2014 on the same beach near Penarth where Tegan found her footprints – but they were those of a 201 million year old Dracoraptor, a carnivorous cousin of the T-Rex.

Four years old Lily found a well-preserved dinosaur footprint at The Bendricks three years ago and now Tegan has discovered even more further down the coast.

“This is amazing because until recently there were so few dinosaur finds in Wales that we thought there weren’t many dinosaurs here,” said Cindy.

“Now we make a footprint or bone discovery every five to six years and we now know that we have a continuous sequence of dinosaurs living in Wales for about 15 million years – it’s amazing.”

The South Wales group of the Geologists’ Association, of which Cindy is vice-president, believes it is “the best non-Triassic dinosaur track site in Britain”.

Cindy said that Wales, which has a geological history stretching back 700 million years, was a hot desert subject to flash floods at the time the dinosaur that left the footprints Tegan found roamed.

She was keen to analyse the prints quickly as she knew it was a known site for prehistoric finds.

“The rocks in this area are Triassic rocks that formed in the deserts, and we know we have dinosaur footprints in them,” Cindy added.

“About 220 million years ago, Wales looked like the Middle East today: very hot, dry, with deserts, and the sea hundreds of miles away.

“But sea levels began to change, continents broke apart, it became wetter, the sea flooded the deserts and the environment became more favorable for dinosaurs.

“200 million years ago, Wales was like the Mediterranean today, with shallow, warm tropical seas and small islands.”

To confirm the discovery, Cindy has now written a report for other paleontologists in which she explains her view that it is a dinosaur.

“It’s great to tell people that we have dinosaur footprints on our coast in South Wales,” she added. “You just have to be in the right place at the right time.”

“In museums, we don’t have time to go out and do this exploration ourselves, so we rely on people like Tegan to do it for us. We can’t do our work without them.”

The Geological Society has told amateur dinosaur hunters that footprints can be “difficult to spot” because many of them are submerged during high tides.

“It is best to go after the flood, when small puddles of water can form on the paths,” advises the group.

“In addition, the footprints are easier to see when the sun is low in the sky, as the footprints are better highlighted by longer shadows.”