NARRATIVE – A new kind of sauropod, the family that includes diplodocus and brachiosaurs, has been uncovered in Angeac. Part of the fossils is being extracted from the clay block in which they are taken at the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris.
A brush in hand, Renaud Vacant attacks the clay layer that covers these gigantic bones that time and sedimentation have transformed into stones. Fossil preparer, he works in pale with paleontologist Ronan Allain. Together, they cure and clean this unreal block in the summer of 2024 on the paleontological site of Angeac-Charente, between Cognac and Angoulême. Since November, these bones have been stored here, in a building dedicated to their preparation for the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris.
The place looks more like a DIY workshop installed in a garage than a scientific laboratory. In the middle of the room, a metal frame frames a plaster over a meter long by a meter wide in which four monumental vertebrae of several tens of centimeters in diameter are imprisoned. Tangled in each other (one is pierced by a coast), they belonged to an animal still unknown, which had to …
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