2023-07-22 06:00:00
The settlement of Iharkút was wiped off the face of the earth for the sake of mining, but thanks to the extraction, a new era opened in Hungarian paleontology: “there were the bones on top of each other. Vertebrae, teeth, small and large fragments, no one had seen anything like this in Hungary before.” We talked to paleontologist Attila Ÿsi, who discovered it and has been researching the Iharkút dinosaur site unique in the world with his team for 23 years.
Paleontologist, baron, also known as the world’s first airplane hijacker Ferenc Nopcsa XX. after his research at the beginning of the 20th century, focusing mainly on Transylvania – to which we also owe the first “Hungarian” dino, the Magyarosaurus – no dinosaur finds were found in our country for almost a century.
Knowledge and luck
At the very end of the 1990s, a geology student did not want to accept the fact that while countless rich deposits are being discovered in many countries, there is no sign of dinos here. He started researching, and when he picked the rock in which the fossils were most likely to remain, luck was on his side: the bauxite mine in Iharkút opened this very layer.
Another coincidence was that within a few minutes of arriving at the site in April 2000, he was already holding the first bone from the age of dinosaurs found in Trianon Hungary. Dr. Attila Ősi professor of paleontology, then a geology student, now head of the ELTE Department of Paleontology and the head of the Hungarian Dinosaur Research Expedition, has been researching the site with his team for 23 years now. Meanwhile, Iharkút, and with it our country
not only was it added to the maps of the world’s dinosaur sites, but scientific interest continues due to the uniqueness and richness of the Cretaceous finds here.
In the paleontologist’s book published in mid-July (In the footsteps of dinosaurs: Adventure, discovery and the history of ancient reptile research in Bakony) wrote the history of the site so far, and fans of Hungarian dinos, ancient crocodiles, and flying reptiles can view the field work at Iharkút on open days again this year. All proceeds go to the Hungarian Dinosaur Foundation, created to support further research, and we talked to Attila Ősi about the beginnings, the Cretaceous Carpathian Basin, Hungarian dinos and the international significance of the site.
Hungarian Dinosaur Research Expedition Open day at the excavation
Until then, no one had seen anything like this in Hungary
In Bakony, about halfway between Veszprém and Pápa, the settlement of Iharkút was located, where a significant amount of bauxite wealth was recognized in the 1950s and 1960s, and mining began in the 1970s. The lentils fell so close to the surface that, according to legend, after the rain, the pigs were driven back from the acorn feeding sticky with red mud, and in the early 1980s, Iharkut was practically liquidated in order to extract it:
the inhabitants were moved to the surrounding settlements, the buildings were demolished, the village disappeared from the face of the earth.
One of the characteristics of the bauxite deposits here is that they were formed in small lenses with an average diameter of 20-50 meters, but they extended extremely deep in the crevices and canyons of the limestone and dolomite: the deepest cavity reached 80-100 meters. Bauxite was formed in terrestrial conditions even before the primitive reptiles discovered by the research group, meaning that in order to reach the mineral raw material, the miners had to penetrate the rock hiding the fossils in many places.
Hungarian Dinosaur Research Expedition to Bauxitelencse pit
As the turn of the millennium approached, the mine supplying Hungarian silver – here we presented in detail the very similar open-pit mining in Gánt, and the Martian landscape left after the bauxite, the home of Tatuin’s buccaneers – was living its final hours, and Attila Ősi, as a student at ELTE, wondered why there were no vertebrate finds from the Middle Ages in geohistory in Hungary. He began to search for Cretaceous rocks, which were created by fluvial sediments, and this is how he came to the so-called Csehbánya Formation, which was formed 85 million years ago. It stretches over a large area, but deep underground, but fortunately, part of it became accessible thanks to the mine in Iharkút.
With András Tormai, the largest dino in Hungary, with the later namesake of the Hungarosaurus torma, the two went to look around the area, and the next step was guided by blind luck to the right place, in the strictest sense of the word. While scrambling down the steep mine wall, Attila turned a “lump” out of the sandstone to find a stable place for his foot, and before throwing it away, he took a closer look: he was holding a red-colored, petrified bone in his hand. After cleaning a surface the size of a tabletop from this layer of sandstone, the researchers were greeted by an incredible picture:
There were the bones on top of each other. Vertebrae, teeth, small and large fragments, no one had seen anything like this in Hungary before
Attila Ősi tells 24.hu.
Hungarian Dinosaur Research Expedition Lower jaw of Hungarosaurus with worn teeth.
Extremities emerge
The research started right away, at first, as students, they went out as a hobby with a tent and a couple of cans in their backpacks, and in a few years they freed about 1,000 bones from the rock: dinos, fish, flying reptiles, and turtles. After graduating from university, professional work began in 2003, the team expanded, colleagues specialized in certain groups of organisms, and the number of finds now reaches 100,000.
Remains of more than 40 types of vertebrates have been found, including eight dinosaurs, from turkey-sized raptors to 3-4 meter long predators to the 4-4.5 meter long, 650 kilo herbivorous Hungarosaurus – you can see descriptions and pictures of the various animals here. Each year, the field work lasts 2-3 weeks with a research group of 20-24 people, and during the rest of the year the paleontologists examine the finds in the laboratory. If they stopped digging now, it would still take years and decades to process the collected material, but there is no question of the former. The area of the rock layer richest in bones is estimated at 5,000-6,000 square meters, of which only 700 square meters were excavated in 23 years. Iharkút pours the fossils.
The Bakony finds are of interest to scientists worldwide, researchers come here from all over Europe, America, Argentina, and several international collaborations are constantly taking place in parallel. Iharkút’s international value is due to the fact that, according to Attila Ősi, “extremities” appear here: unique representatives of already known taxonomic families are forms that have never been seen before, such as Mochlodon vorosi or the herbivorous crocodile Iharkutosuchus makadii. The reason for this can be found in the prehistoric environment of 85 million years ago.
Márton Zzoldos Life picture of the ancient reptiles of Iharkút.
It is unique in the world
At that time, Europe was an archipelago from Portugal to the Caspian Sea, as we know Indonesia today. At that time, the formation of the Alpine mountains was already taking place, in other words, the folding of the Eurasian mountain system. Due to plate tectonic movements, temperature fluctuations and sea level rises and falls, it was a rapidly changing system in time and space – at least rapidly on a geological scale. Some rock layers have worn away, disappeared, others sunk deep or stood out, the point is that fossils from different ages have survived in different locations in today’s Europe.
Only here, in Iharkút, are the bones of terrestrial vertebrates left from one of the roughly two million-year-old eras of the Cretaceous period (about 86.3-83.6 million years ago), the so-called Santonian layer. We have opened a window of time about whose wildlife we knew almost nothing before
says the paleontologist.
A subtropical climate prevailed, that is, it was constantly warm, but wetter and drier periods alternated. The area around Iharkút is especially ideal as a place visited by the river, because the water washed away a lot of remains from the wider area. In addition, it also caused some confusion when the remains of the six-meter predatory mosasauroids were found, since they are typically marine creatures, and their remains have so far only been found in marine sedimentary rocks.
Hungarian Dinosaur Research Expedition Tail vertebra of a predatory dinosaur
The secret is that, like many modern marine animals, they could also swim up and down rivers, and it was not so rare: fossils of many individuals have been preserved, from 70-centimeter youngsters to six-meter adults. So far, more than 100 studies have been published on the finds in Iharkút, and since about 90 percent of the area is still waiting to be explored, we can be sure that it will continue to pour out what are often scientific history novelties for decades to come.
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