Nicolas Cottard has made the discovery of his life. This amateur paleontologist discovered in 2021 then 2023, 2 parts of a dinosaur skeleton on the Alabaster Coast, between Étretat and Le Havre, more precisely at the foot of the chalk cliffs of Saint-Jouin-Bruneval, in Seine-Maritime. A a discovery all the more rare, as it was a species of dinosaur never observed before!
The skeleton belonged to “Caletodraco cottardi“a carnivorous dinosaur that lived 100 million years ago on the Armorican massif. He was a distant cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was 6 m long and lived when the Seine-Maritime did not yet exist because it was submerged under water. “Caletodraco cottardi” is the first dinosaur from this period found in Normandy.
This large carnivore belonged to the family of Abelisaurids, and more precisely Furileusaures (“stiff-backed lizards”). Much like the Tyranossaur, “he had a long tail and small arms”explains Éric Buffetaut, director of research in paleontology at the CNRS, and who analyzed the remains discovered.
“They are distant cousins, except that the Caletodraco lived in the South, in South America, Africa and Europe, and the T. Rex in North America and Central Asia. They never met, even though they lived at the same time.“, continues the specialist. A mystery therefore persists: How did the prehistoric animal end up on our shores?
Because at Cenomanian, 100 million years ago, “Caletodraco cottardi” could not not live in Normandy. Because this part of France was still underwater at that time. In fact, the cliffs of the Alabaster Coast emerged from the water only 100,000 years ago. This is in any case what the CNRS researcher assumes.
“The caletodraco fossil was found formed in the mud of the sea floor“, he explains. But this dinosaur was terrestrial, and the only piece of land that existed at the time was the Armorican Massif (the current Cotentin). “So he had to float for several hundred kilometersperhaps being devoured by a prehistoric shark, before falling to the bottom of the water“, the scientist supposes.
Dinosaurs from the family of Abelisaurids have already been found but never in France, only in the regions where they lived: in Africa and South America. “In Normandy, we know about dinosaurs, particularly in Calvados and on the side of the Cap de la Hève in Le Havre for Seine-Maritime. But in these chalk deposits from the Upper Cretaceous, it is absolutely very rare” he adds.
Eric Buffetaut also christened the dinosaur Caletodraco means ““Dragon of Caletes” a Celtic tribe living in the Pays de Caux in the 5th century BC And cottardi in reference to Nicolas Cottard, at the origin of this discovery and which the research director describes as ““very competent amateur paleontologist”.
Nicolas Cottard did not do badly because he did not find the skeleton by chance! On the contrary, through his research he discovered the first part of the fossil in 2021, then another block in 2023. This last block reveals the vertebrae which form the dinosaur tail, as well as pelvic bones and a tooth.
The French paleontologist having finished studying the remains of the dinosaur, the fossils were deposited at the Natural History Museum of Le Havre. Both men now hope that The remains of the prehistoric animal will be exhibited to the public. The museum must reopen its doors in a year.
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