Pérez Lorente - Dinosaur Footprints and Trackways of La Rioja

Dinosaur Footprints &
Trackways of La Rioja

Life of the Past James O. Farlow, editor

Flix Prez-Lorente

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2015 by Flix Prez-Lorente

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Prez-Lorente, Flix.

Dinosaur footprints and trackways of La Rioja / Flix Prez-Lorente.

pages cm. (Life of the past)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01515-0 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01541-9 (eb)

1. Footprints, Fossil Spain La Rioja.

2. Dinosaur tracks Spain La Rioja.

3. Dinosaurs Spain La Rioja.

4. Paleontology Spain La Rioja.

5. La Rioja (Spain) I. Title.

QE845.P465 2015

567.90946'354 dc23

2014030006

1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15

1.1. Schematic geological and geographical representation of Iberian Peninsula showing location of dinosaur tracksites (modified from Prez-Lorente, Romero, and Torcida, 2002). Locations of outcrops of Mesozoic rocks in Iberian Peninsula that potentially contain dinosaur fossils are shown in white; areas marked with lines show those that cannot contain fossils because they are the wrong age. Regions marked with vertical lines have rocks from before the time of dinosaurs (Precambrian and Paleozoic); regions marked with horizontal lines are post-Cretaceous (Cenozoic: after the dinosaurs).

THE SPANISH PROVINCE OF LA RIOJA IS AN AREA OF THE WORLD where a huge number of dinosaur footprints have been found, with many more likely yet to be discovered. This hilly region has many rock slopes with layers so full of tracks that, if the vegetation, loose rock, and debris could be removed, would yield from 8000 to as many as 25,000 footprints. Using the best estimates from some slopes that is, the maximum estimate from that partial data there may be as many as 70,000 footprints.

Many of the footprints are so easy to see that the first people to discover them were likely shepherds or hunters who passed through the area. However, the identity of the first person to correctly interpret them is another question. The footprints are so evocative that the inhabitants of the region have long associated them with animals. In the villages of Enciso, El Villar, and Poyales, there were people who thought the footprints now understood to be those of theropod dinosaurs had been made by giant chickens. In the village of Navalsaz, it was said that the ornithopod footprints of the Cuesta de Andorra had been made by huge lions. It is difficult to know exactly how long such claims have been made, whether the local population even knew about wild animals such as lions, or whether this interpretation was offered by visitors to the region.

The footprints have also been attributed to animals from medieval mythology, in some cases inspired by religion. For example, in Igea, it was said that the footprints had been left by the horse of the apostle James on his travels. Popular tradition has it that James helped the Christians in their wars against the Muslims. As with the legendary mule tracks of Setubal in Portugal, there is no end of imaginative interpretations. In some cliffs to the south of Lisbon (Portugal) there are some dinosaur footprints which the ancient Portuguese interpreted as being miraculous. Miguel Telles Antunes (1976) says that according to legend, the Virgin Mary Santa Maria da pedra da mua (or an image of her from the 18th century) had come out of the sea and ascended to the top of the cliff while sitting on a mule. During the ascent, the mule left the footprints on the wall. According to Antunes, this tradition may date back to the 13th century. In Igea, the horses footprints are visible near the Santa Ana chapel, at the place where the apostles horse was said to have jumped 3 km to land near the shrine of the Virgen del Villar, where it also left footprints. Interpretations such as these are to be expected, given the knowledge of the population. For example, the presence of marine fossils in many places had to be explained as a whim of nature. Even if no one could explain why, the sea must have been there. Nature is capable of wonderful things! Even today, if you ask an old farmer or shepherd how the sea could ever have been so far inland, although he may not be able to provide an explanation, no one will be able to convince him it was not so. For the people, the rocks, rivers, sea, and mountains have always been where they are at present. In their village, there was never a sea.

Nor would any of the local inhabitants have been able to predict that the sloping rock strata on which the tracks appear had once been horizontal mudflats. It is understandable that people did not consider that normal animals could leave their footprints in such hard rock, whereas the horse of Saint James might have had magical properties that allowed it to make an impression in solid rock. It may have been the wish of the saint or even the horse that the footprint left behind had a shape very different from that left by a typical horse.

It is likely that almost all settlements with dinosaur footprints had traditions and legends surrounding them that have since been lost or that the older generation do not want to tell to strangers.

The first publication about dinosaur footprints in the Iberian Peninsula that I have in my possession is from Jacinto Pedro Gomes (19151916) for Cabo Mondego (Portugal), and the first in Spain is from Albert F. de Lapparent (1965) for the east (province of Valencia). Although geological research began in La Rioja a long time ago, the footprints were not recognized until 1969, when the first publication about dinosaur footprints in La Rioja appeared in the newspaper El Correo Espaol El Pueblo Vasco. The authors were Moiss Iglesias Ponce de Len, a geologist, and Luis Vicente Elias, an ethnologist, who found the footprints while doing fieldwork on the customs of the people from the Cameros region. After this discovery, a number of favorable events occurred.

The first was that the news was not published just in the newspaper. Almost immediately, a learned researcher, Blas Ochoa, who was a schoolteacher from Enciso, began collaborating with a team of vertebrate paleontologists, Maria Lourdes Casanovas and Jos Vicente Santaf. The team described five sites in two publications in 1971 and 1974. The two publications and comments from townspeople who had known the paleontologists inspired two groups of amateurs to search for new sites in their spare time and publish their findings as a challenge to other researchers. By 1979, nine sites had been identified, all near the village of Enciso. (These groups are still working, partly because they have active members and partly because we have followed in their footsteps in looking for new track sites.) Later, a schoolteacher from Igea, Angel Gracia, taught his pupils the importance of fossils and showed them how to search for, classify, and preserve them. His students found sites with footprints near the village, one of which remains to be studied.