Grooves that could be evidence of a stampede of escaping sea turtles. They were found by climbers, on a rock wall in Italy
Climbers in Italy accidentally discovered evidence of an 80-million-year-old stampede of sea turtles. Archaeologists say grooves in a rock face overlooking the Adriatic Sea were made by sea turtles fleeing an earthquake.
The grooves in the rocky face of Monte Cònero, overlooking the Adriatic Sea, were discovered by climbers, who, interestingly enough, had a geologist friend.
Paolo Sandroni later got in touch with Alessandro Montanaridirector of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco (OGC), to go see those curious remains.
Hundreds of these marks are located in a layer of Scaglia Rossa limestone in the Cònero Regional Park, a formation that has been extensively studied for decades and which preserves millions of years of deep-sea sedimentation.
What is now part of a mountain was once a seabed deep that was folded and pushed upward by tectonic forces millions of years ago, Montanari, co-author of the study appearing in the February issue of Cretaceous Research, explained to .
As the same magazine writes, the rock samples collected immediately above the marks and analyzed by the team reveal important clues about the location of the marks and the history behind them.
For example, they suggest that sea turtles lived about 79 million years agoduring the Late Cretaceous, and indicate that the limestone was part of an underwater mud avalanche triggered by an earthquake.
A abundant seismic activity in this formation It is also supported by decades of collective studies. Thin slices of the rock samples reveal microfossils of organisms that live along the seafloor, suggesting a deep-sea environment hundreds of meters deep.
Normally, any traces left by animals would be erased by currents on the seabed and marine animals. However, a earthquake will have caused an underwater avalanche a few minutes after the marks were made, preserving them – explained Montanari.
The only vertebrates large enough to produce these markings in the Late Cretaceous were marine reptiles such as sea turtles. If their behavior mirrored that of some current species, it is possible that they would have fed close to the coast or come out of the water to lay eggs.
Whatever brought them together here, the new investigation points out that it was a earthquake that led them all to flee at the same time.
