Cape Espichel. More than 600 dinosaur footprints discovered.
Set of footprints is presented as the largest in Portugal from the Cretaceous period.
The Portuguese Center for Geo-History and Pre-History (CPGP) announced this Thursday the discovery of 614 footprints of carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs, with about 129 million years, in the area of Cabo Espichel, in Sesimbra, in the district of Setúbal
In a statement, the CPGP states that this is the discovery of "the largest set of Cretaceous dinosaur footprints in Portugal".
According to the Portuguese Center for Geo-History and Pre-History, a scientific article about the finding has already been published in the international journal "Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection".
"These footprints were left by carnivorous dinosaurs (theropods) and herbivores (sauropods and ornithopods), of medium to large dimensions. This is a monumental set of footprints that is distributed over a not very large area", says the entity.
According to CPGP, the footprints were found in different layers on top of a geological formation dating from the Early Cretaceous period.
The footprints, according to the investigation, would have been formed in a coastal environment frequented by a "high number of herbivorous dinosaurs, which left an intense trampling there and probably used this place as a passageway between areas of pastures and where possibly they would be pursued by carnivorous dinosaurs that intended to hunt them".
"Studies on this new site with dinosaur footprints are still in progress, and other news are part of a new article that is being finalized and will soon be submitted for publication", reads the note.
The scientific work aims to record dinosaur footprints from the Portuguese Cretaceous, through a vast team of Portuguese, Spanish, French and Brazilian paleontologists and geologists, led by paleontologist Silvério Figueiredo.
"This study is part of the CPGP research project called 'Vertebrados do Barremiano do Cabo Espichel and its Iberian context: paleoenvironmental and paleogeographic implications'", which has been studying this region since 1998 [...]", indicates the CPGP.
The research also has the collaboration of the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, the Geosciences Center and the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Coimbra and the UNESCO World Naturtejo Geopark.
Available at: <https://www.tsf.pt/futuro/descobertas-mais-de-600-pegadas-de-dinossauros-na-zona-do-cabo-espichel-13288728.html?fbclid=IwAR3no2HwgjP8b3cqboVl5lLlw0DgaWxnUoVl1EM3cIDO89LYAzbFXdbgruY>. Accessed on: 29 Jan. 2021.
More information (in English) can be seen, in PDF version, by clicking here.