Palaeontologists for the day – but don’t give up the day job.

The weather this morning can only be described as dull, dull and very dull. Oh yes and cold! Whatever happened to spring? Aunty had thebrainwave this morning and suggested we pretend to be palaeontologists and search for dinosaur footprints on Sully Beach. Not quite Jurassic Park, but exotic in its own way. We wrapped up in enough layers to keep warm for anarctic expedition and made our way like the intrepid explorers we are to Bendrick Point. Finding the beach where the footprints are meant to be was easy enough, but then the easy part was over. Looking for 220 millions year old foot prints embedded in rock on a beach that is nothing but rock, is, well a challenge.

220 million years ago, in the later part of the Triassic Period, this area lay in the arid belt north of the equator (currently occupied by the Sahara), and South Wales was a hot desert. The Vale of Glamorgan was an area of rocky limestone hills. Although annual rainfall was low, when it did rain, the rain fell in torrents causing flash floods. The floods created rivers which carried boulders, pebbles, sand, silt and mud down to low ground and to a large lake or inland sea which lay where the Severn Estuary is today.

After about 20 minutes of searching we did find some footprints, but these weren’t the ones we are looking for.

Then we started to get our bearings and suddenly we found them. If you look closely it’s possible to see a straight twin line of small puddles in the rock. 

There are several different sizes and kinds of footprints in the rocks here. Small, three-toed footprints were probably made by small, meat- eating (theropod) dinosaurs which walked on their hind legs. Large three-toed footprints may belong to a larger theropod. Some wider, four- toed footprints may belong to a plant-eating dinosaur which usually walked on all fours.