EAVP 2012 dinosaur track field trip

Yesterday, I went on the 1st Field Trip to various dinosaur track sites. It was a very nicely organized trip, and I’d like to thank the organizers Alberto Cobos, Rafael Royo-Torres and Francisco ‘Paco’ Gascó (and anyone else I missed) for the excellent job they did!

Here’s ‘Paco’ in field garb, representing the team with his usual good humor.

Guys, you did a great job,resulting in a fun and informative trip!

Paco is, btw, the guy who made the cool Brontomerus illustration for Mike, Matt & Rich. Great work 🙂

And here’s Alberto, Rafael, and the youngest participant of the conference with his Dad, my colleague Oliver Wings.

but now for the tracks!

Here you can see the complete exposed surface of the first tracksite we visited. Note that the limestone is rather a rough surface, so the tracks are not that easy to see, unless the sun comes in at a shallow enough angle.

This is what a closer look shows:

and this is you-know-what, with nearly a million polygons

and another one

on the way between bus and localities we got to see a lot of beautiful landscape, wildflowers and picturesque villages. Some examples, intermixed with a few more track photos:

Phlomis lychnitis, if I am not totally wrong.

Centaurium erythraea? I’m pretty sure about C., but not the species. It was extremely helpful to have “Dino” Frey there, who was even more enthusiastic about photographing wildflowers. His wife is a botanist, and “Dino” was able to tell me the genus and often species of practically anything that grew and flowered. Not that I’m a total botany noob, but “Dino” is another league entirely.

another track from another site. Manus and pes, quite hard to see, so here they are again without the texture.

you can see the rim of sediment pushed up by the feet.

One more Spanish town….

We had an excellent protracted lunch here – the Spanish cuisine is quite tasty!

one more wildflower….. some Sedum or other.

and one more track before we come to the bloody finale

someone I won’t name (although the sandals are a pretty good giveaway) jumped from a little cliff in a tracksite and this ensued:

I hope the blood offer appeases the palaeo gods!