Earth and Environment Atlas

How The Planet Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Geological Formations

Las Hoyas

Sedimentary and Stratigraphic Formations

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Las Hoyas is a Konservat-Lagerstatte, an exceptionally preserved Early Cretaceous fossil locality, near the city of Cuenca in the Province of Cuenca, Castile-La Mancha, Spain, within the La Huerguina Formation, a sequence of lacustrine limestone and marl deposited in a freshwater wetland roughly 125 million years ago during the Barremian stage. The formation is 60 to 100 meters thick and its fossils owe their exceptional preservation to microbial mats, rapid burial and stagnant bottom waters. Las Hoyas is best known for its exquisitely preserved dinosaurs, especially enantiornithine birds, and has also yielded abundant fish, the most common vertebrates at the site, along with crocodylomorphs, the most common amniotes, and fossils spanning numerous other phyla.

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.