Bolivia has thousands of dinosaur footprints, but few bones

WHEN MARIO JALDIN was growing up in the 1950s in Torotoro, a village in the Bolivian Andes, he noticed hundreds of huge three-toed footprints on the edge of town. There were round ones with fat toes, thin ones with pointy claws, prints in straight lines and at odd angles, as if the beast that left them had had a change of heart. Mr Jaldin’s grandfather, who didn’t like him to stay out late, told him that they belonged to “a monster who comes out at night and is so strong he leaves prints in solid rock”. In 1984 an Italian palaeontologist revealed their true origin: dinosaurs.