Pterosaur Beach
| Pterosaur Beach | |
|---|---|
| Stratigraphic range: | |
 | |
| Type | Fossil track |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 44°31′48″N 1°19′33″E / 44.5301°N 1.3259°E |
| Region | Occitanie |
| Country | France |
| Type section | |
| Named by | Dughi & Sirugue |
  Pterosaur Beach (France) | |
Pterosaur Beach (French: Plage aux Ptérosaures) is a French palaeoichnologic site bearing tracks made by dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Located on the Mas de Pégourdy in the commune of Crayssac in the department of Lot, the site is notable because it is the first place that the fossil footprints of a landing pterosaur have been discovered. The fossil footprints are approximately 140 million years old.[1]
Description
[edit]Pterosaur Beach was, at the end of the Jurassic era, a mudflat, flooded at high tide, on a marine lagoon in a gulf that opened on the Atlantic Ocean between Bordeaux and the island of Oléron. On it, animals foraged for food.[2] The site has hundreds of fossilized trackways.[3] The site as a whole covers an area of around 10 hectares and is 1.2 metres thick.[4]
The site was discovered in 1993. Jean-Michel Mazin, research director of the CNRS at Claude Bernard University, oversaw the research there.[5] Forty species of ichnotaxa have been identified.[6]
Pterosaur Beach is protected by a metallic building, in which paleontologists work in near-complete darkness, for only a raking light can expose the ground contours and sometimes reveal new tracks.[7]
In 2009, the paleontologist Kevin Padian from the University of California at Berkeley, studied one set of pterosaur beach prints and suggested that they represented an aerial landing with the pterosaur's two "feet" side by side; then, after a jump, its two "hands" were used, and the pterosaur began to walk on all fours. For his part, the paleontologist David Unwin did not exclude that these could be swimming marks. Padian replied that if that were the case, the marks would be less clear, less marked. Martin Lockley also judged that it was indeed a landing; the other hypotheses were not convincing.[8]
Gallery
[edit]-
"Émile" prints -
Reconstructed footprint and paw -
Guided tour
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Pterosaur "Runway" Found; Shows Birdlike Landing Style, National Geographic News, August 19, 2009
- ^ "Des traces de ptérosaures mises au jour dans le Lot prouvent que ce reptile volant marchait à quatre pattes". France 3. 7 August 2013.
- ^ A prehistoric 'runway' used by flying reptiles, NBC News, August 18, 2009.
- ^ "Unique Lot beach is full of dinosaur footprints". The Connexion. 10 December 2018..
- ^ "Crayssac, "la plage aux ptérosaures"". Libération. 7 February 2002.
- ^ "La plage aux ptérosaures". L’Humanité. 16 August 1999.
- ^ "Un dino fréquentait la "Plage aux ptérosaures"". La Dépèche.fr. 6 August 2015.
- ^ Torrice, Michael (19 August 2009). "A Pterosaur Comes In for a Landing: Paleontologists discover ancient runway used by the flying reptile". Science. Retrieved 1 May 2025..
External links
[edit]- First record of a pterosaur landing trackway, by Jean-Michel Mazin, Jean-Paul Billon-Bruyat, and Kevin Padian, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
- Movie extract from "La plage aux ptérosaures", by Pierre Saunier
- Plage aux ptérosaures