Fumanya Dinosaurs Park

Integral Development Study for the Fumanya Dinosaur Footprints Site

Fumanya, Catalan Pyrenees, Spain

65 million-year-old footprints

Some millions of years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, the last dinosaurs roamed what is now the Fumanya mountain pass, in the Pyrenees, within the Alt Berguedà region.
In dinosaur’s times, though, the Pyrenees didn’t exist. Instead, there were flat plains near the sea, covered by rain forests and tropical marshes. In one of those marshes, some dinosaurs left their footprints. Afterwards, dinosaurs became extinct, and the footprints fossilized in a limestone stratum. On top of it, the tropical wetlands and forests where the dinosaurs lived also fossilized into a coal layer.
Later, through the clash of tectonic plates, the Pyrenees mountains emerged, and the formerly horizontal layer containing the footprints fossils slid into vertical position. Some 65 million years afterwards, in the late 20th century, the place was mined, removing the coal layer and exposing the dinosaur footprints just underneath.

Fumanya, the most important site of dinosaur footprints in Europe

Fumanya is the most important dinosaur footprint site in Europe, and one of the most valuable world-wide. In addition to containing 3.500 dinosaur footprints and trails, casted on a monumental 500m long and 80m high limestone wall, the site is very rich in remains of the dinosaur’s ecosystem, with large fossils of primeval palm tree leaves and trunks. Therefore, this unique site is classed BCIN (National cultural heritage site), and, as it sits at the border of a natural park, it is also classed PEIN (National natural reserve).

Fumanya Dinosaurs Park

Based on this extraordinary heritage as well as the sustained existence of a global-scale “dinomania”, the aim of the creation of the Fumanya Dinosaurs Park is to become the reference center about dinosaurs in Catalonia, and, at the same time, a project for territorial economic re-balancing in a region severely affected by the disappearance of the former coal mining industry.
In order to allow for future prospecting, the old mine pit, now a protected paleontological site, will be left untouched. This is the place where the remains will be preserved and interpreted. On the other hand, the barren mountain of mining rubble, adjacent to the mine pit but out of the protected area, will be the place where the recreation of the Earth and the Berguedà region as they were 65 million years ago will take place. Most of the recreation spaces will be excavated within the rubble mountain, while the dug-out material will be used on site to form outdoors terraces and green slopes replanted with native species that will help to prevent erosion and will re-naturalize the mountain, merging it with the surrounding landscape.

Dinosaurs Trail

An outdoors path will allow visitors to get very close to the footprints for a close-up view and will complement the contents of the existing Interpretation Center. On the way to the footprints, the other values of the site - nature, geology and landscape- will also be explained. The existing paths used by the large trucks during the exploitation of the former mine will be recycled into pedestrian trails. Where there is no existing route, elevated pathways and platforms will bridge the gaps. This will be the first phase of the Fumanya Dinosaurs Park to be implemented.

Visitors Center and Agora

The current reception pavilion will be expanded into a Visitors Center, which can be built in phases to accommodate the incremental growth in visitors. In order to valorize the Berguedà forest landscape, the Visitors Center will be built entirely in wood. It will be a linear building that will wrap around a sheltered but open agora, with views onto the dinosaur footprints wall. It will also become the point of departure towards the other Park facilities and a multi-purpose event space.

Cretaceous World: recreating both the dinosaurs and their ecosystem. An innovative museography and a unique world-class experience

A path will cross an existing forest and bring visitors to the entrance of the Cretaceous World, located within the mining rubble mountain. Conceived as a “time capsule”, it will bring visitors 65 million years back in time. The innovation of the Cretaceous World lies in recreating not only the dinosaurs, but also their habitat. The Cretaceous Period, whose climate has often been described as a “global greenhouse”, will be recreated in a transparent dome which will cover a crater excavated in the rubble mountain. The crater will contain a spectacular and scientifically rigorous Cretaceous botanical garden, filled with primeval palm trees, arborescent ferns, conifers, gingkos, orchids, and other still-existing species that are direct descendants of those which covered the Earth just before the dinosaurs’ extinction. Within this habitat, the replicas the dinosaurs of Fumanya -Titanosaurs and Dromeosaurs- will be at real scale and animated with realistic movement.