Tracking dinosaurs in the Jura

Sébastien Steyer, a paleontologist, is one of the rare specialists of the Permian period, when Earth was only one continent: Pangaea. At the end of this period, 90 % of the living species disappeared. Some of them, the vertebrates which live before the dinosaurs and which leave water to settle on earth, are the main forgotten of paleontology.

In April 2009 at Plagne in France, dinosaur footprints were discovered by Marie-Hélène Marcaud and Patrice Landry, members of a naturalist society. They belonged to Sauropoda species, which where huge herbivores. Researchers explain that this site is exceptional because of the size of the prints and the length of the trackway.

In the Hérault Department, the palaeontologist Eric Buffetaut and his team have launched the excavation of a dinosaur bones deposit for 10 years. A very active collaboration is lead with the ACAP, an association of archaeologists and palaeontologists amateurs.

This film describes the progress of palaeontological diggings between 2011 and 2013 on the famous site of Muse (Carboniferous Permian Autunian phase, in Burgundy) which has become a multidisciplinary and international training excavation site. Since the 19th century, this world-class deposit - geologists call it the "Autunian stratotype" - has produced very rich and astonishing samples of palaeobiodiversity with the unearthing of exceptionally well-preserved fossils of plants and animals, the…