For the next in the “Walking In” series we go to Europe’s equivalent of the Morrison Formation: “Walking in the Alcobaca and Lourinha Formations. Both are located in the Luistanian Basin in costal Portugal, they are from the same geological time periods and share the same Dinosaurs.

152.5 Million years ago, the late Jurassic. In the coast of the young Atlantic, a Portuguese boy watches a pair of nesting Lourinhanosaurus ward off a group of Miragaia, small, long necked Stegosaur native to the Lourinha formation. The same formation has yielded large deposits of eggs with were found to belong to Lourinhanosaurus. The Miragaia are in term trying to flee from a group of Ceratorsurus trying to take a kill from a pair of Torvosaurs, one of the largest theropod Dinosaurs of Europe, who has taken down an old Zby, a sauropod unique to Portugal. Both Ceratorsurus and Torvosaurs are also found in the Morrison formation of the US, one of several Dinosaurs all three formations share.

More Zby look on from the edge of the woods. In the background several heards of herbivores move by. First, closest to the right is another Stegosaur called Decentrurus. Right behind them is a heard of perhaps the largest Dinosaurs in Europe, Lusotitan. The Portagueise cousin of America’s Brachiosaurus. Behind the Luisotitan to the left is a heard of another sauropod known as Dinheirosaurus which could be the same species as Supersaurs, also from America.

On the tree the boy stands is a Corcadelian called Knoetschkesuchus. Finally on the boy and the tree closest to the foreground on the left is the true treasure of the Alcobaca formation. A tree shrew called Henkelotherium where a nearly complete skeleton was found. It’s an extremely rare to find a complete mammal skeleton from the time of the dinosaurs, more commonly paleontologists find only jaw bones and teeth for they are the toughest bones in the skeleton.

I am open to feedback and critiques, I hope you like it!