The campaigns of the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs

The Friends of Palaeontology and the Geo-palaeontology section of the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs

The Geo-Paleontology Section of the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs, part of the Barcelona Provincial Council, carried out a total of 19 excavation campaigns between 1979 and 1998.

The antecedents of this group must be sought with a group of enthusiasts for palaeontology and geology such as Messrs. Antoni Lacasa, Ferran Albuixec, Ramon Alió or Nacho Santacana. This group made regular excursions to La Pedrera de Meià to collect fossils. As the collections grew, so did the awareness of the heritage importance of this site.

In 1972 there was a first meeting between Antoni Lacasa and the president of the Lleida Provincial Council where the need to create a museum of palaeontology in Lleida was put on the table. At the same time, Lacasa came into contact with great figures in paleontology of the time, such as Dr. Miquel Crusafont, director of the Institute of Paleontology of Sabadell, Dr. Lluis Via, director of the Museum of Geology of the Conciliar Seminary of Barcelona, or Dr. Sylvie Wenz, palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum of Paris and a good connoisseur of the site. These contacts are accompanied by the public calls made by Mr. Lacasa to promote a museum in the city, which did not happen despite the interest of various cultural and political sectors. However, the group continued with its task of promoting research, mainly of the fossils Pedrera de Meià, and the dissemination of these findings to the public.

Lacasa’s persistence and the contacts he had with Lluís Ferrer i Condal and the palaeontologist Josefa Menéndez Amor allowed him to obtain a list of the fossils in the quarry and to be able to start a study of the fossils that appeared in 1981 (Lacasa, 1981), which was the first volume to collect all the fossils that appeared at the site.

In 1973 the group “Friends of Palaeontology” was formed, which progressively grew in membership thanks to the media coverage of the findings and contacts with groups of paleontological professionals and institutions.

In 1977 the group of amateurs, led by Lacasa, Remacha and Esteve, obtained a link with the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs, which also entailed a space in the Institute’s building. This fact marks the birth of the Geo-Paleontology Section that is part of the “Cabinet of Natural Sciences” that includes Botany, Zoology and Geology.

Two geologists were part of the group (Remacha and Conesa) that had Lacasa, Albuixec and Llorens as its spokespersons and Santacana in charge of technical photography. With the creation of this section, new members joined the group, including Xavier Delclòs, Juli Pocino and Josep Borull as part of the 48 members that this section had.

In 1978, when Lacasa was appointed Deputy Councillor of the institution, a course on geological dissemination was carried out and the design of a room for the exhibition of the recovered fossils began. The main collection was made up of fossils from La Pedrera de Meià “which were ceded to the IEI for study, exhibition and conservation”.

The campaigns at the sites of La Pedrera and La Cabroa

That same year, with the prospect of an excavation campaign in the lithographic limestones, Lacasa contacted the University of Lyon researcher and specialist in palaeobotany, Georges Barale, while preparations were made for the following year’s campaign.

Six members made up that expedition (Lacasa, Barale, Mateu Pascual, Delclòs and Borrull), under the direction of the French researcher, but they did not get to work in the old limestone quarry but stopped at the pass called La Cabroa, where some laminated limestone also emerges. This point was the work camp for the days of the first campaign, which allowed the collection of up to 111 fossil remains of fish, insects and plants.

The success of the expedition, confirmed in the report issued by Dr. Barale, meant that the campaigns were repeated annually until 1998 (with the exception of 1997, which was not carried out), financed mainly by the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs with occasional contributions from the University of Lyon, the Generalitat de Catalunya or “La Caixa”.

The transfer of competences in culture to the recently re-established Generalitat de Catalunya, meant that, from 1986 onwards, authorisations to carry out excavations had to be processed by the Departament de Cultura, at the same time that awareness of the importance of cultural and natural heritage began to be raised and restricted, progressively, the search for lithographic limestone sites.

National and international researchers participated in the nineteen excavation campaigns, in addition to the aforementioned Georges Barale, such as Dr. Georges Barale. Sylvie Wenz, who had already excavated the site in the 60s, Dr. Günter Viohl, from the Jura Museum, Dr. Santafé from the Museu de Paleontologia de Sabadell, Dr. Alicia Masriera, from the Museum of Geology of Barcelona and the geologist Joan Ullastre.

During those excavations, exceptional fossils were recovered that allowed the erection of new species, such as a Ginkgo leaf and another ginkgoaceous leaf, Etermotglosa lacasai, in 1981, the first spider at the site in 1983, a new feather in 1984 and the first species of termite described, Meiatermes bertrani.

Between 1988 and 1989 the González Redondo brothers, amateurs of palaeontology, delivered a specimen of a fossil bird to the Geo-palaeontology section. This fossil was the basis for describing a new species of enantiornitid bird, Noguerornis gonzalei.