Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1
Location of Dinosaur
track sites in Algeria. 1 Amoura;
2 Tiout (Ain Sefra); 3 Belvedere-
Akherdous (Djurdjura); 4, 5, 6 El
Bayadh; 7 Ouafeg El Hamra; 8 El
Mezioud (Brezina); 9 Daiet Sidi
El Arbi
3.1
Amoura Footprints Site
belt that runs from southern Spain and Gibraltar to Northern
Sicily and Calabria. In Algeria, it comprises, from the south
to the north, the following zones (Durand-Delga
1969
): (i)
the External zones, or Tellian domain, which represent the
inverted African palaeo-margin consisting of Mesozoic and
Cenozoic sedimentary rocks that overthrust the Atlas fore-
land; (ii) the
Amoura is located in the Wilaya of Djelfa, approximately
300 km south of Algiers (Fig.
2
). This village is perched on
the southern side of Djebel Bou Kahil in the southern part of
Ouled Nail Mountains. Djebel Bou Kahil is located in a
syncline, with Turonian sediments in its core, located near
the South Atlas Front. In Amoura, the outcrops consist of
limestone-marl series of Cretaceous age (Albian to Turo-
nian). The Amoura site is of major geological and heritage
interest due to the presence of dinosaur footprints. From a
historical perspective, this is one of the oldest sites in the
world which is known for dinosaur tracks. Those dinosaur
footprints found on a limestone slab, were
yschs units, made up of Upper Cretaceous to
Eocene units (Massylian and Mauretanian
ysch), and
younger, Oligocene to Aquitanian silici-clastic series (Nu-
midian Flysch); and (iii) the Internal zones, made up of
crystalline Hercynian or older basement, and their sedi-
mentary cover,
, mainly formed by
Mesozoic carbonate slices, and characterized by a thick
limestone formation of early Liassic age. The
the
“
dorsale calcaire
”
ysch domain
and the Internal zones are overthrusting the External zones.
The
rst reported in
1880 by Le Mesle and Peron who thought they were bird
footprints. At the time of this discovery, only the famous
footprints in the red sandstone of the Connecticut Valley in
USA were known. For this reason the Amoura site is of
major historical interest since it was the
of the Djurdjura Mountains are
subdivided, from north to south, into three structural and
paleogeographic units (Flandrin
1952
): the internal (Kouri-
et), the middle (Haizer-Akouker) and the external (Tikjda
and Tamgout) units.
Assemblages of dinosauromorph footprints were discov-
ered by Kota
“
dorsale calcaire
”
rst dinosaur tracks
site discovered in North Africa and the second in the world
(Taquet
2010
). Popular legend attributes the footprints to a
large ostrich (Naama in arabic), that belonged to Marabout
Sidi Ali Ben Allouche, the saint of the village. Bellair and
Lapparent (
1948
) reported the legend with the following
sentence:
ski et al. (
2004
) in the Middle Triassic of the
Haizer-Akouker units near the locality of Belvedere-Ak-
herdous in the Djurdjura Mountains.
ñ
“
This ostrich, running on the rock, leaping over the
ravine that separates the two groups of footprints, jumping
and landing, would have marked the track of his feet on the
rock
3
Dinosaur Track Sites in Algeria
. During our on-site visit, we noticed that this legend is
still current among many people in the village. It was
Gaudry (
1890
) who suggested for the
”
Four sites are described below, namely, the Amoura foot-
prints site, the Tiout footprints site, the Belvedere-Akher-
dous (Djurdjura) footprints site, and the El Bayadh footprints
sites.
rst time that the
Amoura footprints belong to dinosaurs and not
to giant
birds.
