Caletodraco cottardi. Literally “the dragon of Calètes and Cottard”. This is the Latin name of a new carnivorous dinosaur 100 million years old, found at the foot of the chalk cliffs of Saint-Jouin-Bruneval (Seine-Maritime), recently described in Fossil Studies. It pays homage both to a Celtic people from the Caux region and to Nicolas Cottard, the author of the discovery. For this high school physics teacher, seeing his name associated with a dinosaur is “recognition of the life of an amateur paleontologist”.
Now aged 59, he devotes himself to fossils “a passion passed on by a primary school teacher, and still as vivid as when I discovered my first micraster, a heart-shaped sea urchin. » His new find is not entirely accidental. Nicolas Cottard is one of the enlightened amateurs. “We can define ourselves as such if, when we address a scientist of international rank, we receive a response”he said.
This is indeed his case, he corresponds with researchers in Belgium, Germany, England and even the Netherlands, on crabs, starfish or other echinoderms, some of which also bear his name. He is a specialist in the Cenomanian, a geological period which goes from approximately − 100 million to − 94 million years ago. With Jérôme Girard, another amateur, and the geologist Bernard Hoyez, they even wrote imposing monographs on the subject, the fruit of patient field studies in Upper Normandy.
“We always return to these cliffssays Nicolas Cottard. It was during one of these vigils that I discovered, in a block fallen, remains of vertebrates, in a cord of pebbles washed by the tide and the rain. » It was in 2021. His partner Jérôme Girard tackled the 60 kilos of stone with a chisel and grinder. Called to the bedside of the patiently excavated bones, paleontologists Eric Buffetaut (CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure) and Javier Parraga (Muséum du Havre) then hesitated on the interpretation. Flying reptile? Dinosaur?
Rare in chalk cliffs
In 2023, in the same place, Nicolas Cottard finds another block belonging to the same animal. This time, the diagnosis can be made by Eric Buffetaut. This is a carnivorous dinosaur, a particularly rare specimen in chalk cliffs. “At the time, the sea was 150 meters above the current level, and we find mainly marine animals in these strata”recalls Nicolas Cottard.
We can therefore assume that the dinosaur died on emerged land, in the Armorican Massif or in Cornwall, before being transported to the sea (by a river, a flood?) then by the currents until it sank and was buried. in the sediments. “But where the discovery is exceptional is that the furileusaurs, to which it is attached, were only known in South Americaunderlines Nicolas Cottard. Which raises interesting questions about its origin. »
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