Find the oldest fossils of dinosaurs in Castelló



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## Find the oldest fossils of dinosaurs in Castelló Excavations in the municipality of Portell bring to light the first remains of Jurassic fauna of almost 130 million years ago

21/11/2016 |
SCP

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* [![ dinosaures-portell _MG_3021](/com/investigacio/arxiu/noticies/2016/11/dinosaures-portell/_MG_3021.jpg)](#)

Researchers from the Crystallography and Mineralogy Area of the Department of Agrarian Sciences and Natural Environment at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) have found the oldest fossils of dinosaurs in the province of Castelló. Excavations of two sites in the municipality of Portell in Els Ports region have brought to light the first witnesses of the Jurassic fauna that lived in Castelló between 128 and 130 million years ago. These works have been made possible thanks to the collaboration agreement signed by the Town Council of Portell and the UJI.

The excavation director and paleontologist, Andrés Santos-Cubedo, explains that these deposits were found in 2002, but so far, 14 years later, they have not been able to investigate them. "We had the intuition that these areas of Portell could be very important from the point of view both patrimonial and scientific, and the results after several weeks confirm so," argues the UJI researcher. These deposits, from the geological formation of Mirambel, are older than those of Cinctorres and Morella, which also belong to another formation, the Morellana, dating back 126 million years.

TWO ORNITHOPODS

The witnesses of the oldest fauna of Castelló found in Portell are of at least two dinosaurs. "Altogether, in the first of the deposits we have extracted four bones from the legs of the animal and some vertebrae, corresponding to the limbs of an ornithopod dinosaur, from five to eight meters, with phytophagous habits; while in the second site we have been able to extract remains of another ornithopod: vertebrae of the tail, hip and pubis, which provide a lot of information to define the species," explains Andrés Santos-Cubedo.

The recovered fossils are now being prepared and studied in depth within the framework of the project "Estudio geológico y paleontológico y puesta en valor de los yacimientos de Portell" ("Geological and paleontological study and the value of the Portell deposits"). This project has made it possible to highlight the importance and quantity of deposits, since in Portell eleven sites belonging to the Mirambel formation have been studied, although only excavations have been planned in two of them.

The mayor of Portell, Álvaro Ferrer, expressed his satisfaction at the finding of fossils of dinosaurs in his municipality, while showing his interest that the town "joins the promotion and dissemination of this heritage in Els Ports, since it is vital for tourism in the region. In fact, we plan to take action to promote its appeal for the general public to visit us."

The region of Els Ports is known for its deposits of Mesozoic vertebrates, especially dinosaurs, found in the Argiles formation in Morella, with an age of 126 million years. Since 2002, geologists and paleontologists from the Universitat Jaume I, the Universitat de València and the Guix Group from Vila-real study and investigate new vertebrate sites in Els Ports, but outside this formation.

Andrés Santos is a researcher at the Department of Agrarian Sciences and the Natural Environment from the Universitat Jaume I. He holds a degree in Geological Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Between 2011 and 2013 he was the director of the 4th Paleontological Restoration Workshop School of the Government of Aragón. He has worked as a researcher at the Department of Experimental Sciences from the Universitat Jaume I, and as a paleontologist at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont. In the field of paleontology, he has been the director of several excavations in the Valencian Community, Catalonia and Aragón, and has published scientific articles in national and international magazines on fossil deposits, such as Almenara-Casablanca, Orce, Dmanisi and the dinosaur sites in the region of Els Ports.

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