Welcome to Galve, land of dinosaurs!
Today I propose you a different outing suitable for all audiences where, with some Earthcaches of the area, you can travel through millions of years and see how the inhabitants that populated the earth during the Jurassic and Cretaceous lived.
Galve is a privileged place by the rocks that form its territory, formed in coastal and inland environments of the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, contain an important fossil record of continental vertebrates (for quantity, quality and diversity), which faithfully illustrates terrestrial ecosystems of that moment in the history of the Earth and makes of Galve one of the most appreciated and recognized paleontological site of Europe.
Along with footprints, eggs and fossil bones of dinosaur, remains of flying reptiles, amphibians, fish, plants and even mammals have been found in Galve.
The Paleontological Parkof Galve, created in 1993, is composed of the Municipal Paleontological Museum, the ichnite sites, models of dinosaurs and the recently joined Legendark.
The Megalosaurus
The Megalosaurus or Megalosaurus (Latin for "big lizard") is a type of theropod dinosaurs, who lived in the late Jurassic period about 166 million years ago, in the Bathonian, in what is now Europe and possibly in America, Asia and Africa.
It was a bipedal predator about 9 meters long and about a ton of weight with a well balanced structure for the race. The cervical structure shows they had a flexible neck. Like all theropods, he had three toes on the forefoot and one inverted. Although they had not reached the tiny size of more modern theropods like Tyrannosaurus size, the forelimbs of Megalosaurus were small and probably had digits.
Classification
Being a genre known from long ago, Megalosaurus allocation has varied over the years. At first it was considered a carnosaur, when the separation of these with Celurosaurianos was done only by the size. It was considered more advanced than Dilophosaurus, but less than Allosaurus. Later, with the revision of theropods in recent years, he was placed out of the Carnosauria, but inside Tetanurae.
Where is it located?
On the Megalosaurus, we have not found too many fossil remains as a skeleton is concerned, only a few teeth about 6 to 10cm found at the site of Las Zabacheras. Unfortunately, since the late 80s and some 90s, Las Zabacheras was used as a dumping ground for what the deposit seemed irretrievably lost. In early 2000, the debris were cleaned adnt he fossil level could be seen, but we new remains of sauropods haven’t reappeared in Las Zabacheras.
Life style
The Megalosaurus was a large carnivore and probably would have attacked even the largest sauropods like stegosaurs and sauropods, is also probably he got some of its food by scavenging. There is a good descriptive display of megalosaur and of the history of the discovery, in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
The concept of this Earthcache is that the geocacher to knows this dinosaur and that he enjoys this incredible place. I could explain more about the subject but I like my Earthcaches to be brief and concise so visitors leave the place having learned something new. Enjoy it!
At the indicated coordinates, you can find an infoboard, to validate your log, please send me the answers to the following questions. You can log without waiting for my reply, if a problem occurs we will try to find a solution together.
Log this cache as a "found it" and send me your answers via my profile or via message on geocaching.com, and I will contact you in case of problem.
1-. What bone can we see in the information panel?
2-. Take a picture showing where that bone is.
3-. Of what colour are represented the footprints in the photo?