Ichnite deposits

More than 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic period, dinosaurs populated the earth. There were still 63 million years to go before man appeared on the earth... Of the passage of those creatures through Asturian lands, there are still, even today, abundant traces on the eastern coast.

When dinosaurs moved over the mud or sand of the area, they left footprints, also known as ichnites. The sedimentation conditions that gave rise to them, such as the alluvial, deltaic and marine environments, are very favourable for the preservation of footprints and bones of dinosaurs and other reptiles of the time, such as plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs and crocodiles. When the ichnites were formed, the soil was soft, and only later, after being deeply buried, would they turn into hard rock and reach us, almost intact, to the present day.

The ichnites of the Asturian coast present a set of characteristics that make them a unique example when it comes to reconstructing the life of a community of amazing creatures.

The clearest evidence of the abundance and variety of dinosaurs that inhabited Asturias during the Jurassic period comes from the numerous findings of ichnites in the three Upper Jurassic formations: in Vega, Tereñes and Llastres, which outcrop on the coastal cliffs of the municipalities of Villaviciosa, Colunga and Ribadesella. From their study it can be deduced that both bipedal dinosaurs (tropopods and ornithopods) and quadrupeds (mostly sauropods) inhabited the area. Judging by the size of these footprints, there were dinosaurs of very different proportions in Asturias: from very small, the size of a bird, to enormous, as in the case of the brachiosaurids. The ichnites from La Griega beach are the largest known in Spain and are among the largest in the world.

There is a surprising route to discover the sites, the so-called Costa de los Dinosaurios (Dinosaur Coast), which can be followed through three councils.

In Villaviciosa you should visit the beach of Merón, the cliffs of Oles, and the lighthouse and port of Tazones; in Colunga, the cliffs of Llastres and the beach of La Griega; and in Ribadesella, the beach of Vega, the cliffs of Tereñes and the beach of Ribadesella/Ribeseya.

The good state of preservation, the wide morphological variety and the large number of preserved footprints place the Asturian ichnite sites at the head of the most important Jurassic age sites in Spain.