Kathmandu (PTI): A team of experts from Japan and Nepal here have discovered 40,000 and 24,000-year-old footprints of elephants respectively, which suggest that the largest animal on the land lived in the Kathmandu Valley tens of thousands years ago.

Geologists and sedimentologists from Japan and Tribhuvan University, Nepal have discovered 40,000 and 24,000 years old footprints of elephants from two separate soil samples in Kathmandu, Kathmandu Post said.

"To our knowledge, nobody has found such imprints on soil sediments that old anywhere else in the world," said Mr. Tetsuya Sakai, Sedimentologist from Shimane University in Japan, said.

The discovery suggests that elephants lived in the Kathmandu Valley tens of thousands years ago, experts said.

They reached the conclusion after measuring the age of the footprints and sediments with carbon dating, an international instrument for measuring the age of materials.

The experts, however, added that they needed animal fossils for more evidence for further confirmation of their interpretation.