2024-03-19 14:15:07
REPORTAGE – Amateur paleontologists have discovered a fossil deposit with exceptional preservation in the south of France.
Special envoy to Cabrières,
At the first blow of the ice axe, the piece of shale crumbles and splits in two, revealing mysteries buried for hundreds of millions of years. « This is a pygidium, the back part of a trilobite », shows Éric Monceret. On another piece of grayish rock, he points “ cheeks and eyes » of the marine arthropod – which disappeared 250 million years ago -, while his companion, Sylvie, carefully wraps another find in newspaper.
Newbies will struggle to distinguish the geological treasure from a common alteration of the rock. But here, in the middle of holm oaks, boxwood and broom, a few steps from a communal path in Cabrières – land of Languedoc vines – we are at the heart of the playground of the two amateur paleontologists. For decades, the couple has been excavating the rock of this Black Mountain, located at the southern end of the Massif Central. She, a professor of history and geography in a college in Carcassonne…
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