France’s varied geology makes it fertile ground for dinosaur fossil hunters, but many finds have only been unearthed in the last 20 years, with French palaeontologists only recently becoming interested in dinosaurs – and now funding is becoming harder to secure.
Caletodraco cottardi, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived 100 million years ago, was first discovered on a beach in Normandy, northern France, in 2021.
Nicolas Cottard, a science teacher and amateur palaeontologist, was scouring the chalk cliffs around where he lives in Saint-Jouin-Bruneval, and found a large piece of stone with bones in it.
He and a another amateur fossil collector worked on preparing it – cutting out the bones using specialised chisels and micro-pneumatic hammers.
“They knew they had something interesting. So they contacted me and asked me, what do you think? And I said it's difficult to say what it is,” recalls Eric Buffetaut, a palaeontologist with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Two years later Cottard found another piece of stone with more bones – vertebrae, part of a tail and pelvic bones – that fit with the first, and also included a tooth, which sealed the deal: it was a dinosaur.
Listen to an interview with Eric Buffetaut on the Spotlight On France podcast here:
”The tooth was very, very clearly that of a carnivorous dinosaur. I spent quite a long time making comparisons and discussing it with colleagues in other countries as well,” explains Buffetaut, who determined it was a new species – one that belonged to the Furileusauria clade of dinosaurs, which until then had only been found in South America.
At the time Caletodraco cottardi lived, the Normandy cliffs would have been in the middle of the proto-Atlantic ocean. In the paper Buffetaut published about the discovery, he hypothesised that the dinosaur's body had likely been washed out to sea and floated several hundred kilometres offshore, where its carcass was eaten by a prehistoric shark, because a shark tooth was found mixed in with the bones.
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Why this discovery was made in France is not yet understood, because even though the continents were not in the same position 100 million years ago, there was still water separating Europe and South America. The discovery could therefore shed new light on the evolution and migration of dinosaurs.
“That is what makes it really exciting. It's not just because it's a new dinosaur, but it raises a lot of questions about the geography of the time, about how these animals travelled around and so on,” said Buffetaut.
Palaeontology revival
Caletodraco cottardi is just one of several dinosaur fossils found in France over the last 20 years. Many were discovered at a dig in Angeac, in the south-west, where last year a new species of sauropod which lived 140 million years ago was identified.
Buffetaut says such finds are the fruit of an interest in dinosaurs that bloomed in the 1980s and 90s.
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The 19th-century French anatomist Georges Cuvier was one of the first people to identify dinosaurs, or the concept of ancient, extinct species. He described vertebrae found in northern France as belonging to an ancient crocodile.
“He thought were peculiar crocodiles, but in fact, they turned out to be dinosaurs,” Buffetaut said.
But, subsequently, interest in dinosaurs waned in France.
“There was a long period when apparently French palaeontologists were not that interested in dinosaurs, but more interested in mammals or human evolution,” Buffetaut said.
“There was really a renewal of interest at the end of the 20th century, when a few palaeontologists in France said, we have dinosaurs in France, so why don't we look at them in more detail? They have been there all the time, but nobody cared very much.”
Amateur collectors
France’s geological variety means there are dinosaur traces in its soil from all three periods of the dinosaur age, from around 252 million years ago to 66 million years ago.
“Of course, not all these geological formations have yielded dinosaurs, but quite a few have,” says Buffetaut.
One area particularly rich in dinosaur traces is the Jura mountain range in eastern France, on the border with Switzerland. The Jurassic era – 201 million to 145 million years ago – was named after the mountain range.
But fossils can only be studied if they are unearthed, and in France, as in many areas, this is thanks to amateurs, like Nicolas Cottard.
“Professional palaeontologists can't be in the field all the time, everywhere, in a country like France. So you must rely on cooperation with people who are able to go and collect fossils in the cliffs along the sea every weekend, who keep a constant watch,” says Buffetaut.
”Without those people, many, many important fossils would remain undiscovered.”
Lack of funding
Professionals such as Buffetaut are called in to analyse, compare and confirm finds. But the number of experts dwindling, with fewer positions for palaeontologists studying dinosaurs in France today.
“When I first got my position in palaeontology, I thought it was really hard to find a job. But it was easy in comparison with what it is now,” says Buffetaut.
Palaeontology, unlike applied research, is not a lucrative field and as such, especially in a period of budget cuts, is not a priority.
“Palaeontology is not considered really something important,” says Buffetaut. “It has no economic importance.”
And yet, there is interest. He receives calls from students interested in digging up dinosaurs, although he tells them not to get their hopes up.
“I try to tell them if they are interested they should try but they should know it will be very, very difficult, and there is absolutely no guarantee of a job,” he says.
“But if you're really motivated and interested, I don't want to discourage you. I'm trying not to be discouraging.”
Listen to an interview with Eric Buffetaut on the Spotlight On France podcast, episode 122 here.
