The site and its environments
An Early Cretaceous wetland
Reconstructing a lost landscape
About 140 million years ago, during the Berriasian, Angeac was part of a wet floodplain near a river. Freshwater deposits and vegetation indicate a swampy environment under a tropical to subtropical climate.
This landscape is reconstructed by combining evidence from sediments, plants, animals and traces of activity.
Three sets of evidence
Water and sediments
Clays, sands and coarser layers record different depositional conditions. The geometry and deformation of the layers provide evidence of soft, waterlogged ground crossed by animals.
Vegetation
Wood, leaves, seeds, pollen and spores provide different kinds of information. Studying them together documents the landscape’s conifers and spore-bearing plants, alongside aquatic vegetation.
The wetland’s inhabitants
Fish, turtle and crocodile remains occur alongside dinosaurs, amphibians, lizards, pterosaurs and small mammals. Sieving complements discoveries of large bones with fossils sometimes only millimetres in size.
Preserved interactions
Footprints in sediment, marks on bones, tunnels in wood and coprolites record activities and relationships between organisms. Taphonomy examines what was moved, deformed or altered before fossilisation.
From landscape to fossil-bearing layer
The excavation plan and vertical sections locate fossils within the sediment volume. The aerial view provides an overview of the deposit’s structure.
Sections show the boundaries of the bone-bearing layer. Samples and cores complement observations at the excavation surface.
Further reading: Allain et al., 2022 ↗ · 2021 taphonomic synthesis → · Age and succession of the layers →
