In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

363 21 Dinosaur Remains from the “Sables Verts” (Early Cretaceous, Albian) of the Eastern Paris Basin Eric Buffetaut* and Laetitia Nori Dinosaur remains have been known from the early Albian marine “Sables verts” (greensand) of the Argonne region of the eastern Paris Basin since the 1870s. The scanty material available was obtained in the course of commercial phosphate exploitation, an activity that ceased in the early twentieth century. This chapter describes dinosaur bones and teeth from the Sables verts collected in the late nineteenth century that have not hitherto been described. The distal end of a humerus is the first indisputable record of an ankylosaur from the Sables verts. Limb bones and teeth are referred to the enigmatic theropod Erectopus, previously described from the Sables verts. Sauropod caudal vertebrae are the first record of that group of dinosaurs from the Sables verts. Dinosaur diversity in the Sables verts is thus higher than previously recognized, but this is certainly only a fraction of the dinosaur fauna from which this assemblage is derived, which probably inhabited the Anglo-Brabant landmass to the north. In contrast to earlier Cretaceous assemblages from Europe, ornithopods are conspicuous by their absence. The mid-Cretaceous dinosaurs of Europe remain poorly known. Dinosaur remains have been known from the Albian “Sables verts” (greensand ) of the Argonne region of the eastern Paris Basin since the 1870s, with most of the known material described in a monograph by Sauvage (1882). This material had been found in the course of the commercial exploitation of phosphate nodules contained in the greensand, which were used for the production of fertilizer (Buffetaut, 2006). This exploitation declined sharply at the beginning of the twentieth century because of competition from cheaper phosphate from other sources and completely stopped in the 1930s, so that the chances of finding new fossil specimens are now extremely small. Nevertheless, unpublished material can still be found in old collections . The specimens described here were found in the collections of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie of Nancy, currently housed at the Zoological Museum in Nancy. They consist of a relatively small number of bones and teeth, which are interesting as an addition to our knowledge of the poorly known dinosaur assemblage from the Sables verts. Institutional abbreviation. MNHN, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France. Introduction Buffetaut and Nori 364 The specimens described below come from the hilly and wooded region of the eastern Paris Basin known as the Argonne, made famous by heavy fighting during World War I, in the southeastern part of département Ardennes and the northwestern part of département Meuse. There, a greensand formation (Sables verts) underlies the middle to late Albian Gault Clay. These glauconitic sands are 20 to 45 m thick and contain phosphate nodules that are concentrated in a 5- to 25-cm-thick layer (Nivoit, 1874). The nodules, which according to Sauvage and Buvignier (1842) were locally known as coquins or crottes du diable (“devil’s shit”), were identified as a potential source of fertilizer in the 1850s, and their commercial exploitation soon began. In the Ardennes alone, 41,000 tonnes of phosphate were extracted in the year 1872. The extraction of the nodules was carried out in trenches or pits, or in underground shafts (Nivoit, 1874; Meunier, 1898; Bestel, 1908). The nodules were then screen-washed in running water to clean them of their clayey and sandy matrix (Fig. 21.1). During the heyday of phosphate exploitation in the Argonne in the 1870s, this activity employed hundreds of workers, and the value of phosphate-producing land had risen sharply. However, the phosphate boom in the Argonne did not last long, and by the first decade of the twentieth century, the industry had considerably declined (Collet, 1904), mainly because of the competition of other sources of phosphate—first the phosphate-bearing Chalk of the Somme in northern France, and then the large phosphate deposits of the French colonies and protectorates in North Africa (Buffetaut, 2006). Fighting in the Argonne during World War I resulted in the destruction of several factories and contributed to the decline of the industry. The last phosphate exploitation seems to have ceased its activity in 1936 (Lapparent, 1964). The Sables verts of the eastern Paris Basin are 20 to 45 m thick and are overlain by the Gault Clay. They are glauconitic sands, with frequent clayey intercalations, and are interpreted as having been deposited in a quiet shallow marine environment. Their age is early Albian...

Share