Ancient trails - Pedra da Mua

145 million years ago, a band of Sauropods crossed a coastal region of Southern Portugal. Their footprints became impressed in the muddy ground which, by some geological coincidence, dried rapidly and became a quite solid giant slab. In time, and due to the tectonic plates’ movements, the ground arisen to what is now a monumental layered slab, standing at 40º inclination and reaching over 80m above sea level. Impressively, the dinosaur tracks were kept mostly intact through the ages and now stand as a very conveniently displayed geological photograph of ancient and extinct lifeforms. In this photograph (sorry for the low resolution), at least nine tracks are seen. The patterned footprints appear as dotted straight lines diagonally crossing the rock and contrasting with the grey slab as they are filled with vegetation. These can be easily identified in this diagram. Seven are parallel tracks, corresponding to smaller sauropods behaving as a herd, while the remaining 2 correspond to larger sauropods following them. Curiously, the bottom track provides evidence that this dinosaur was… limping. In this area, at least 38 individual tracks have been recognized, including those left by theropods and ornithopods.
In the XV century, a local legend states that a miracle occurred, as the Virgen Mary climbed this rock mounting a mule. Thus the name Pedra da Mua (somewhat translatable to Mule’s Rock) and the sanctuary that has been erected on top of the cliff.

Cabo Espichel, Portugal
2016, January

P.S. Sources for this information can be found in English, Spanish and, specifically for these tracks and highly detailed, in Portuguese.