Dinosaurs and Deserts in Wales by Cindy Howells palaeontology curator National Museum of Wales.

Dinosaurs and Deserts in Wales by Cindy Howells palaeontology curator National Museum of Wales.

If you are hoping to find fossils of dinosaurs or perhaps fossil trackways in Wales then in you have to travel to the SE of Wales to the Mesozoic rock outcrops that possibly contain them. The area is a narrow wedge situated between Cardiff and Porthcawl.

The first evidence of dinosaurs in the area was found in the form of footprints. A block consisting of a footprint trackway was found by TH Thompson in 1879 in a local churchyard Newton, near Porthcawl. He was a naturalist and recognised the similarity of these footprints to some recently described ones from America. He then worked in conjunction with prof.Sollas (1849 - 1936) from Bristol, to undertake further investigations of the footprints.
They not only concluded that these were dinosaur footprints but observed the similarity between these footprints and those made by flightless birds. In one experiment they persuaded an Emu to walk across wet cement to show the similarity. That was ingenious as it is the earliest idea of linking dinosaurs to birds. The prints were tridactyl, bipedal with a long central toe suggesting a Theropod dinosaur. The trace fossil itself is known as Anchisauripus.

Not only are Theropod tracks found in south Wales but bones from theropods have also been found. For example, in 1898 a fossil jaw was found by stonemasons in Bridgend and in 2012 a finger bone was discovered at Lavernock Penarth. Both of which were found in deposits of Rhaetian age (208.5-201.3 mya)
In 1879 another block of stone revealed fossil Anchisauripus but also two completely different sorts of prints. These latter prints are known as Eosauropus and will have been made perhaps by a Sauropodomorph dinosaur.

As footprints differ depending on the thickness, grain size and moisture content of the mud when they are made it is difficult to always get a really good impression of the foot that made it. But one was found by a four year old girl whilst out walking with her father during Covid lockdown, from which one could see the shape of the muscle pads, the joints and the claws. This was recovered and is now in the museum. On studying the fossil it was found that there was in fact two prints which showed that it was moving so that now the stride-length can be determined from which other measures can be deduced.

Dinosaur footprint by John Wiki commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dinosaur_footprint_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2653136.jpg

Another series of prints found by the public in 2023 occur at Penarth in redbeds similar to that which occurs at Bendricks bay. These have a very consistent stride-length but these prints are eroding very quickly.

If you go inland to the Carboniferous limestone quarries near Bridgend you will find Triassic material filtered down in fissures in the Carboniferous limestones. Here can be found bones of various creatures eg. The mammal Morganucodon oehleri. But also other finds.For example, In 1952 dinosaur bones were also found within these cave sytems eg. Pantydraco caducus a herbivore.But in 1921 they re-examined a few bones and found that they were in fact the bones of a theropod dinosaur known as Pendraig

In 2014 at Lavernock bone material was found after a rock fall which has been identified as a theropod dinosaur and has been named Dracoraptor. Therefor south Wales has a diverse fauna of dinosaurs and other reptiles covering 20 million years
A summary can be seen in the table below:

If you would like to see fossil footprints then the SSSI site of Bendricks Bay Barry is a good site to visit. Here there have been found at least four different types of footprints.The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff also has footprints on display.

An interesting talk by Cindy Howells on the fossils that can be found in Wales.