Lourinhã is known as “the portuguese capital of dinosaurs” due to the great number of paleontological discoveries that were made in this area, but it wasn’t always like this. In 1990, a young girl uncovered a dinosaur nest with embryos in it, a very rare finding. From that point onward, the city became a landmark for paleontologists and dinosaur enthusiasts alike. This focus on dinosaurs overshadowed some other important aspects of the city, for example, the GEAL (Etnologic and Arqueologic Group of Lourinha), which is a non profit organization that used to study the history of the various cultures of the Lourinhã region, but after the nest discovery in 1990 it became way more focused on the paleontology part. “As you may notice, the group name doesn’t include paleontology” says Pedro Ferreira, employee of GEAL.
The region has a prevalence of fossils from the jurassic period (201-143 million years ago), ranging from the famous dinosaurs to less known flying reptiles and even footprints, ranking 7th in number of dinosaur taxa (species or genus), which is incredible given the area of the country compared to the other paleontologically rich countries. On top of that, some of the fossils found there are of new species.
All these findings are of significant importance as they not only teach us about the past, but they can help us solve current and future problems, for example, the paleontological record of the snow leopard that is now extinct in Portugal can help us preserve it in places it still exists.”This isn’t just to make better CGI for the new movies, it helps preserve what we have today” says Pedro.
