Portugal 2020

After our planned annual trip with Paleoprospectors got cancelled due to Covid-19, we decided to throw things around and go to Portugal instead. Portugal had already been on our list of places that we wanted to go, so we decided this was a great opportunity to do so. On our way to the coast, we stopped at a friend who took us to his amazingly located farm in the area of Castelo Branco and showed us some fossils he found, he explained to us what we should be looking for and how to get the fossils out of the rock.

Fossil hunting was going increasingly better and on day three we had two really nice finds.

1. A big bone in matrix, most likely sauropod rib.

2. A small theropod tooth (now prepped out).

After another few great days, we had found several more teeth including theropod teeth, crocodile teeth, and a camarasaurus tooth (see pictures below). I was hoping to find at least 1 good dinosaur tooth in Portugal, so I was really excited that we already found so many. Although I hoped for it, I didn’t expect to find nearly this much. 

We spend the last two days of fossil hunting with our friend, who took us to some of his favourite spots. He found a partial Miragia (stegosaur) pelvis, and we found a partial sauropod vertebra which took us almost the whole day to get out of the rock even with the help of a grinder.

After a long and final day in the field, the three of us decided to go to a small local restaurant in Lourinha where we discussed our finds and talked about all sorts of things. 

Overall, I had a really great time in Lourinha hunting and learning about fossils and we made some really incredible finds. I am also very grateful to our friend for showing us where and how to hunt for fossils in this area. As well as teaching us a lot of new things. I hope to go there again sometime in the future.