Trip in west of France

[fifbrindacier]

Hello, i went fossil hunting several times this year and i want to show you some spots and the fossils that i found or can be found there.

 

Firstly here are fossils from a little village near the town of Orthez : Sallespisse. I have no pics of the site, but here are pics of the fossils found there and exposed in the City hall and in the museum of the Salt in Salies de Béarn.

 

Here are the fossils i found there :

 

 

I sent some to @Herb recently :

 

After this site i went in the mountains, looking for trilobites. So i went to the col of Aubisque and the col of Soulor.

[caterpillar]

Do you know the level of Sallespisse ?

[fifbrindacier]

15 minutes ago, caterpillar said:

Do you know the level of Sallespisse ?

Serravallien.

[caterpillar]

Good level for shells

[fifbrindacier]

Just now, caterpillar said:

Good level for shells

Absolutely, here you can also find shark teeth and vertebrae.

[fifbrindacier]

I went back several times to Bidart, here, in the Maestritchian layers, where we went with @caterpillar :

 

I found some urchins and sammonites like those ones :

 

And in the Lutetian layers :

[fifbrindacier]

At Jard sur mer,

i found a lot of big but not well preserved ammonites.

Here are some i've brought back :

The most interesting fossils were those :

Ripple marks :

 

Those odd traces, dinosaurs ? This site is Oxfordian :

 

Grallator tracks :

 

Here is a partial one my friend there, gave me :

[fifbrindacier]

A few days later i went in La Dominelais. The spot is inside a landfill site.

I brought back a few Llandellian trilobites :

 

Our camping place in Britany was in the town of Ancenis, on the boarders of the.Loire river. Ancenis is also the town of a famous poet : Joachim du Bellay :

[Herb]

nice fossils and beautiful country

[fifbrindacier]

Thank you Herb.

[Manticocerasman]

Nice report and finds 

I love those Grallator tracks

[fifbrindacier]

 

2 minutes ago, Manticocerasman said:

Nice report and finds 

I love those Grallator tracks

Thank you too.

[Ludwigia]

Thanks for taking us along on your trips.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Wonderful report. 

Love the trilos and the praying mantis. 

As always, i love the scaphopods very much too. 

There is a unique species Dentalium orthezense from that area. 

[fifbrindacier]

In October i visited the paleosite of Sansan, classified as being of National interest.

An incredible number of species of vertebrates as been found there, in the place locally called "Lo camp de los osses" (The field of the bones). A lot of the skeletons have their bones still in connexion.

In the sheepfold which is now a little museum, the sheepkeeper Joseph Debat paid his lawyer Edouard Lartet by giving him a mastodont tooth.

Edouard Lartet was also paleontologist. In that site he found the first fossil of a great monkey, Pliopithecus antiquus, a revolution for the paleontology and the theory of evolution.

There also has been found the first Archebelodon in Europe and the second in the world. It is exposed in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris.

 http://vertebresfossiles.free.fr/gisements/gisement_sansan.htm

 

 

Displays and workshop are there to show to the visitors how the bones are treated.

 

Reconstitutions and future reconstitutions of skeletons.

Amphicyon major :

 

Anisodon

 

Archeobelodon filholi :

 

Here is the exposed skeleton in Paris :

[fifbrindacier]

33 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

Thanks for taking us along on your trips.

 

23 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Wonderful report. 

Love the trilos and the praying mantis. 

As always, i love the scaphopods very much too. 

There is a unique species Dentalium orthezense from that area. 

Than you mates.

[fifbrindacier]

In December i visited for the first time a spot in my department, Bargues with some friends.

 

Here is the site in itself :

 

A bit damp.

 

The layer that interested us were the black one that shows the period when this site was a mangrove, but mostly the layer under it.

 

 

Some of my friends' finds :

 

Here are some of mines

 

A bit tireds, but happy !

[fifbrindacier]

In January, i went in several sites of Martillac, the country of the Bordeaux's wine designation : Graves.

There is the blue and the yellow Martillac. This is due to the color of the sediments.

Château Plantat :

 

On the property of Château Smith Haut Lafitte (joyfully, the fossils aren't as expensive as this great wine) :

Blue Martillac :

 

Yellow Martillac :

 

Among the vineyard of that Château :

 

[Kane]

Those distorted trilobites are spectacular. One day I hope to get my hands on a complete example. 

[fifbrindacier]

Last month we made a little trip to the Pointe du Chay at Angoulins sur mer.

The last time i went there was two years ago. The aspect of the cliff has changed a lot ! The cliff isn't as white as it was then.

 

Three years ago, it had more that look :

 

Now, it looks like that :

 

My husband at work !

 

A nice block of coral

 

Sorry for the out focused photo.

This mouth plate is not so common here :

 

Some of my finds :

Pseudocidaris mammosa

 

Other radioles :

 

Crinoïds Apiocrinus royssianus

 

Other crinoïds species (and/or maybe the same) :

 

Trichites saussurei

 

Ceratomya excentrica ?

 

Ceratomya capreolata ?

 

Pholadomya protei

 

Pleuromya uniformis ?

[fifbrindacier]

35 minutes ago, Kane said:

Those distorted trilobites are spectacular. One day I hope to get my hands on a complete example. 

They're very astonishing. @nala has great ones from there.

[fifbrindacier]

And finally, last but not least, after having visiting the Eiffelian of Aubisque, the Llandellian of La Dominelais, the Oxfordian of Jard sur mer, the Kimmeridgian of La Pointe du Chay, the Maestritchian and the Lutetian of Bidart, the Serravalian of Sallespisse, the Burdigalian of Martillac, the Aquitanian of Bargues, the Miocene of Sansan, yesterday, for the first time, i visited the Eocene of Plassac, near Blaye, on the boarder of the Gironde estuary just after the Dordogne and the Garonne rivers joined their waters.

 

Another man at work :

 

All the urchins of that spot and also a lot of gastropods and bivalves are endemic of that place and still in a process of designation.

Fossils in situ :

 

A rare and very delicate urchin :

 

What i brought back home, some where given to me by my friends who still had some fossils of that place :

Pelecypods and gastropods (with my fist entire Xenophora) :

 

Urchins :

[FossilNerd]

2 hours ago, fifbrindacier said:

Here are some of mines

 

Wow Sophie! 
 

Great report and finds! Looks like you have done well so far this year. I’m not sure what this gastropod is but those spiky bits caught my eye. 

[fifbrindacier]

16 minutes ago, FossilNerd said:

Wow Sophie! 
 

Great report and finds! Looks like you have done well so far this year. I’m not sure what this gastropod is but those spiky bits caught my eye. 

It's a Melongena Cornuta.

[caterpillar]

Nice report Sophie with different fossils from whole Earth Story