Registered Charity Number 1016312 Company Registration Number 02775501
Bendrick Rock Grid Reference: ST 144 677 Bendrick Rock is the newest addition to BIGC's portfolio of sites. Formerly owned by Associated British Ports, the locality in Barry, South Glamorgan is one of the UK's most important coastal geological localities and is listed as both a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Geological Conservation Review Site (GCR). The GCR lists the locality twice, for its stratigraphy and for its exceptional fossil reptile tracks. This foreshore site is famous for its Triassic Red Bed deposits which show remarkable dinosaur footprints and trackways. The footprints occur over wide areas and many individual trackways can be identified on single bedding plains. The exposure itself provides extensive outcrop of the Upper Triassic, Mercia Mudstone Series where the stratigraphy is dominated by fine red mudstones, marls, ripple bedded sandstones and occasional conglomerates. The sediments here are recognised as important palaeoenvironmental indicators, recording a time when climate in this area was predominantly arid and terrestrial but with occasional periods of heavy rainfall. The sediments and climatic conditions are similar to those found in a modern sabkha or playa basins like those found in North Africa around Abu Dhabi. During the Late Triassic it is probable that the Bendrick Rock area was a low lying marginal environment where large ephemeral fluvial (river and stream) systems sporadically filled a larger heavily evaporated, hypersaline lake. The fluvial deposits are interpreted as the result of periodic flash flood events and show a range of sediments and depositional structures. The rivers that existed in this area would have periodically filled the lakes and during times of heavy rainfall burst their banks creating extensive shallow floodplains. These flood events would have deposited fine muds over a wide area and left many shallow pools of rapidly evaporating water. Above: Modern playa (L) and sabhka (R) - as South Wales would have looked in the Upper Triassic. The evaporation of the floodwaters led to the deposition and accumulation of evaporitic minerals such as gypsum and calcite. It is in these unconsolidated floodplain muds, marls and fine soft lake side sediments that dinosaurs roamed and had their tracks preserved. It's the combination of exceptional fossilised trackways and array of unusual and highly indicative environmental indicators rarely seen in the geological record that make this an internationally important site. During 2006, the Countryside Council for Wales became aware that professional fossil collectors had been targeting the site and illicitly removing large slabs of dinosaur tracks. The fossils had been appearing on the internet auction site E-bay and several were later found in the fossil and rock shops at Lyme Regis. The South Wales Police were involved in the recovery of the fossil material and the cautioning of the traders. The fossils footprints have since been returned to the BIGC who have passed them on to the National Museum Wales where a scientific collection of tracks is housed and exhibited. Site owners the British Institute for Geological Conservation and Countryside Council for Wales as statutory enforcement agency support a policy of responsible fossil collecting. We urge serious amateur collectors to ask permission to visit and collect responsibly. L: Illegally-collected dinosaur footprint from Bendrick Rock, with price label! L: A police officer examines the site where dinosaur footprints were illegally collected at Bendrick Rock.