Fieldwork

2022: Los Colorados Formation (Upper Triassic), La Rioja Province, Argentina - Cynodonts

Seven years after my last palaeontological expedition, I finally renewed with the field when I was kindly invited to participate in a field season in the Talampaya National Park of La Rioja Province, Argentina, by my colleague Leandro Gaetano.  The two weeks field trip aimed to look for cynodont remains from the Norian Los Colorados Formation in the famous Las Esquinas fossil site. This was my first experience with a camping site with tents and temperatures lower than 0 degree at night and three days were needed for me to start resting properly! A cynodont skull and several vertebrae were found as well as a the skull and axial skeleton of a small crocodiliform. I personally found a lot of sauropodomorph remains, which had to be left on the ground for another team to collect.   

2015: Elliot Formation (Lower Jurassic), Eastern Cape, South Africa - Dinosaurs

During the first year of my postdoctoral fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I was invited to be part of a paleontological expedition in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The expedition, led by my supervisor Jonah Choiniere and Prof. Roger Benson from Oxford University, aimed to excavate an articulated skeleton of the sauropodomorph dinosaur Massospondylus in the Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation and to look for additional dinosaur remains in the area. This field season allowed me to meet (or know better) excellent palaeontologists Roger Benson, Kimberley Chapelle, Blair McPhee, Serjoscha Evers and David Ford, and to be more familiar with the dinosaur fossil sites of South Africa.

2009 to 2013: Lourinhã Formation (Upper Jurassic), Lisbon District, Portugal - Dinosaurs

Working on my PhD thesis in the lovely Portuguese town of Lourinhã, which is considered by some as the capital of dinosaurs in Europe, gave me the great opportunity to participate in field work every summer and to prospect along the highly fossiliferous cliffs boarding the Atlantic ocean whenever I could. The region of Lourinhã is probably one of the richest dinosaur sites in Europe, with more than ten dinosaur species from the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian Lourinhã Formation found in proximity to the little town. The Lourinhã Formation is contemporaneous and particularly similar to the famous Morrison Formation of the United States. It mainly outcrops along the Atlantic coast of the Lisbon Province, which makes it one of the most beautiful places in the World to excavate dinosaurs. Lourinhã is also famous for its dinosaur embryos, which I had the pleasure to excavate and study during my PhD thesis. My PhD supervisor Octávio Mateus is the specialist in the vertebrate fauna of the Lourinhã Formation and the leading palaeontologist at the museum of Lourinhã where I pursue my PhD thesis. Octávio organizes several field seasons with many volunteers from all over Europe every summer. During my PhD, I participated to five field seasons during which dinosaur eggs, pterosaur trackways, sauropod and turtles remains as well as a new ankylosaur dinosaur were discovered.

2010 & 2011: Grès de Silves Formation (Upper Triassic), Algarve, Portugal - Temnospondyls

In the summers 2010 and 2011, I had the great opportunity to participate in two field seasons aiming to look for and excavate fossils on a new fossiliferous outcrop (the Penina Bonebed) from the Upper Triassic Grès de Silves Formation of Algarve, Portugal. This fieldwork was lead by palaeontologists Octávio Mateus (UNL), Richard Butler (BSPG), Steve Brusatte (Uni. Edinburgh) and Sébastien Steyer (MNHN) and numerous specimens of Metoposaurus algarvensis, a new species of the temnospondyl Metoposaurus (Brusatte et al., 2015), were found. Excacating in Algarve was an amazing experience not only because the site is situated in an increadibly beautiful and picturesque region of Portugal but also because it gave me the opportunity to know and interact with excellent palaeontologists from England, the US and France. For more information on the discovery made on this site in 2010 and 2011: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/paleontologists-uncover-super-salamander-boneyard

2005: Udurchukan Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Blagoveshchensk, Eastern Siberia, Russia - Dinosaurs

Shortly after I completed the first year of my Licence in geology at the University of Liège, Belgium, I participated and was the French-speaking ambassador of a Belgo-Russian palaeontological expedition in Eastern Siberia. The field trip aimed to excavate dinosaurs in an extremely fossiliferous oucrop located in the suburb of the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk. The expedition was organized by the Belgian and Russian palaeontologists Pascal Godefroit (IRSNB) and  Youri Bolotsky, respectively, and brought 20 amateur palaeontologists from all around Belgium to this remote place of Russia. Blagoveshchensk is a relatively large city (~200 000 people) from South-Eastern Siberia located on the border of the Amur river which marks the boundary between Russia and China. The region of  Blagoveshchensk is famous for its palaeontological treasures given that a great number of dinosaur bones were unearthed in this area and even in the city itself. Most of the bones that my colleagues and I exactavated during the two week fieldtrip belonged to the hadrosaurid Amurosaurus riabinini coined by Yuri Bolotsky in 1991.