Portugal is well-known for its collection of dinosaur fossils. In fact, the town of Lourinhã is well known as “Dinosaur Town.” Fossil hunters often scour the coast around Lourinha and find treasures.
There are a number of sites around the country where fossils can be visited – usually ichnofossils or “trace fossils” (in Portuguese, icnofosseis) which are the fossilized record of an animal rather than the animal itself. Dinosaur footprints (in Portuguese, pegadas de dinossaurios) abound! (Many fossils are, of course, excavated and displayed in museums.)
You can search for specific sites in the map at the right or browse through the entries below. (More posts are added as they get visited!)
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Dinosaur Footprints of Praia Grande
Looking up at the cliff face, you might think that the footprints were made by lizards climbing up a wall. However, the prints were laid down on a flat muddy lake bed over 100 million years ago. Two-legged dinosaurs left their prints in the mud, which then fossilized and the ground folded by tectonic movement,…
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Trilobite Museum
In the gallery, the rectangular sheets of black rock line the walls all around. White-grey images adorn each one. Some are of individual animals, others of groups. Many simply show the trilobites as they had lived (or at least, as they had died). Others showed evidence of specific behaviours such as traveling in a column,…
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Lagosteiros Natural Monument
Stand on the headland facing the Atlantic Ocean. To your left, just across the bay sheltering Lagosteiros Beach, lies Cabo Espichel which is the furthest point of the Setúbal peninsula. In front, the ocean stretches out to the Americas. To your right, you can make out Lisbon and the Sintra hills across the Tejo River.…