{"id":4142,"date":"2026-11-09T20:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T20:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/charente-quarry-yields-more-than-70000-fossils-a-140-million-year-old-swamp-explains-why\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T20:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T20:26:17","slug":"charente-quarry-yields-more-than-70000-fossils-a-140-million-year-old-swamp-explains-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/charente-quarry-yields-more-than-70000-fossils-a-140-million-year-old-swamp-explains-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Charente Quarry Yields More Than 70,000 Fossils, a 140-Million-Year-Old Swamp Explains Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

In July 2019, a sauropod femur measuring about two meters in length emerged from the Angeac-Charente fossil site, located between Cognac and Angoul\u00eame. This giant bone is only one piece among tens of thousands. A study by the Mus\u00e9um national d\u2019Histoire naturelle explains how a Cretaceous marsh became such a dense archive of dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

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Spotting in a sand and gravel quarry, the Angeac site has been excavated every summer since 2010<\/h2>\n

The deposit lies about 700 meters north of the village, in a commercial aggregate quarry. The first bones were noticed during extraction work in the late 2000s. By 2010, paleontologist Ronan Allain of the MNHN opened a dig there.<\/p>\n

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This initial season yielded a 2.20-meter femur, cataloged under the number ANG 10-400. Later, the 2019 specimen confirmed the presence of giant sauropods. Its weight, estimated at between 400 and 500 kilograms, remains approximate.<\/p>\n

The fossil-bearing layers date to the Berriasian and the early Valanginian, around 140 million years ago. Consequently, Angeac provides a rare window into the Early Cretaceous terrestrial Europe. Previously, only the Spanish site of Las Hoyas offered such a precise view of this period.<\/p>\n

Between 2010 and 2017, 724 square meters excavated yielded 68,726 bone remains and 3,123 coprolites<\/h2>\n

The reference article, authored by Lee Rozada, Ronan Allain and eight coauthors, appeared in the journal Lethaia<\/strong> in 2021. It thus summarizes nine field campaigns of about four weeks each, with around forty people. In total, nearly 724 square meters were cleared, by hand or with a mechanical shovel.<\/p>\n

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Indeed, the average density<\/strong> reaches nearly 95 vertebrate remains per square meter. Among them, 7,152 pieces could be assigned to a species and a specific bone, while more than 66,000 fragments remain undetermined.<\/p>\n

A muddy swamp, scavenging crocodiles and herds trampling bones shaped this cemetery<\/h2>\n

According to the authors, the fossils come from a single deposition interval, within a marshy<\/strong> environment with an argillaceous bottom. Moreover, the rare earth elements in the bones and sediments confirm contemporaneous burial. The site thus locks in a snapshot of the ecosystem.<\/p>\n

The bones also carry traces of their history. Thus, numerous bite marks<\/strong> from crocodiles appear on turtles, fish, and ornithomimosaurs. Additionally, trampling marks betray intense dinoturbation.<\/p>\n

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The dominant species is an as yet undescribed ornithomimosaur, represented by at least 44 individuals<\/strong> of varying sizes. The team therefore contemplates a mass mortality within a herd. By contrast, most sauropod bones would have undergone only limited transport by the water.<\/p>\n

Surveying with a tachymeter and sieving tons of sediment, the excavation method evolved over the campaigns<\/h2>\n

Initially mapped by hand in 2010, the records were later made with a theodolite, then with a total station<\/strong> from 2015. Subsequently, a geographic information system allowed the study of the distribution of remains.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, several tons of sediment were sieved and washed<\/strong> to recover micro-remains, such as the teeth of small crocodiles. The authors acknowledge biases, since plots were not all excavated to the same depth. Sorting could also artificially multiply fragments.<\/p>\n

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The material joins the collections of the Angoul\u00eame Museum<\/strong>, or passes through the MNHN. Most notably, recent identifications, including a sauropod close to Camarasaurus, show that the inventory is not closed. Each summer, the quarry thus adds to the portrait of a vanished marsh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2692,2688,1414,2691,2689,2693,2690],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-140millionyearold","tag-charente","tag-explains","tag-fossils","tag-quarry","tag-swamp","tag-yields","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4144,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions\/4144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}