Campaigns and studies by Lluís Ferrer i Condal
A dark period, closure of La Pedrera and Civil War
With the completion of the lithographic stone extraction work, the intensity of fossil collection declined, at least those that ended up in the hands of scientists who later deposited them in public collections.
Surely the quarries were visited continuously, no longer to produce lithographic stone, but to take advantage of the stone to make sinks and sinks.
The Civil War raged for a long time in Montsec, where we can still find the trenches and remains of war material. In addition, the war brought a period of intellectual and scientific darkness that halted the progress of Catalan society for decades.
A new impetus for scientific research
During these dark years, the most important thing was to survive, leaving aside many of the hobbies or scientific or cultural enjoyments. It is at this time that we find a key figure in the reactivation of the collection and study of fossils from La Pedrera.
Lluís Ferrer i Condal, was the doctor of Salàs de Pallars. In the early 1950s he became interested in La Pedrera de Meià and made his first visit there. Ferrer was a fossil enthusiast and in 1951 he discovered a frog fossil in La Pedrera and a feather, among other finds of great international interest. This frog turned out to be a new genus and species, Eodiscoglossus santonjae (Villalta, 1954), found in part and counterpart when opening a limestone slab. As a curiosity, one of the parts of the slab was sold to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid and he kept the other part of the slab in his collection.
Key figure in the discovery of the first angiosperm
It should also be noted that during the outings made between 1951 and 1952 he collected numerous vestiges of flora and fauna that he sent to Carlos Teixeira, a Portuguese palaeontologist at the University of Lisbon. Among them, the set of samples with plants was the basis of the study carried out by Teixeira (1954) in which he determined two new species of angiosperms from the site: Montsechia vidali and Montsechites (Ranunculus) ferreri.
A guide to great expeditions
In 1954, Ferrer i Condal accompanied Dr. Wonnacott, who would later return with a team from the British Museum. At the request of Dr. Crusafont, a series of expeditions to La Pedrera began in 1964 with scientists from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, led by Dr. Crusafont. Sylvie Wenz, with the collaboration of the Laboratory of Paleontology of Sabadell and students of the Faculty of the University of Barcelona. Seven campaigns were carried out in which it was possible to collect numerous fossils that were studied in Paris. Ferrer Condal made available to the French scientist the fish he had collected on previous expeditions. Sylvie Wenz dedicated the species of one of them (Notagogus ferreri) and also to Crusafont (Leptoletis crusafonti).
Currently, the valuable collection of Lluís Ferrer i Condal is not available to any museum but is guarded by some of his relatives. Until shortly before his death, this collection, made up of specimens from the Meià quarries, but also fossils obtained in other prospections or by exchanges with other amateurs from all over the world, could still be visited at his residence in La Fuliola (Lleida). The location of this collection is currently unknown.
A curious paleontologist, Walter Kühne
Text based on Walter Kühne’s field diaries, provided and translated into English by Urs Klebe
Walter Georg Kuhne, a German palaeontologist closely linked to the sites of the Catalan Pyrenees, visited the Montsec area in detail in 1953. From his field notebooks, provided and translated by his son Urs Klebe, it has been possible to learn about the researcher’s adventures in Montsec and discover, for example, the curious encounter with a 17-year-old boy named Joan Rosell i Sanuy, who would later become a leading geologist in this area and throughout the Pyrenees.
of BreadA good season in Montsec
During his stay in Catalonia in 1953, at the end of August, he seems to have contacted Lluís Ferrer i Concal in Salàs de Pallars who told him that the best way to get to La Pedrera was to go to the Sellés station, where he could stay at the Hotel de Lago and from there with a mule and a guide he could go to the Bagasses fountain which is the point where the path begins. Apparently the communication between Kühne and Ferrer continued for some time (perhaps thanks to the subsequent visits that Kühne made to Pallars) since in a note of May 1954 he wrote that: “Dr. Ferrer has a pen without the countermold of the limestones of the Wealden of Montsec, the axis is not symmetrical and retains black pigments. The feather of Archaeopteryx 1 shows the same state of conservation.”
On October 2, he made the first inspection in the eastern part of La Pedrera del Montsec where he could observe the lithographic limestone layers that turn into massive rock to the west. His notes indicate that he camped in Montsec until the 5th and that he was visiting the lithographic limestone outcrops, other areas of Montsec and also the village of Rúbies. On the 5th it descended again to the Passarel·la and from there to Àger. From there, he can get an overview of Montsec and also observe that the lithographic layers are not found in this western area. As a curiosity, it is worth mentioning a comment in relation to this area: “a beautiful starry sky!”, he wrote. Years later, Montsec received the distinction of “Starlight” or protection zone for the observation of the stars and the universe.
Contact with the site of La Cabroa
Kühne most likely also visited the site of La Cabroa. Thus, in a note dated October 17, 1953, he speaks of Montsec II, a small limestone deposit that is located on the road between Santa Maria and Rúbies, a little further east of the abandoned coal mines (probably those of Reguer). This outcrop says that it is located a few minutes down the cart path and that it cuts the limestone deposits. He also observes that, since the stones were brought down from Rúbies to Santa Maria, he is convinced that the workers of La Pedrera must have known about this outcrop. He describes it as small, about 200 meters long and 20 meters high. It seems that he entertains himself by sampling the layers and comments that in an hour and a half he has found two plants, half a small Leptolepis and an insect. On the other hand, it does not find coprolites.
As a summary of his visits (and also thanks to the information provided by Joan Rosell) Kühne proposes four outcrops with lithographic deposits: Montsec 1 near Rúbies (Pedrera de Meià), Montsec 2 (incision in the road between Rúbies and Santa Maria (La Cabroa), Montsec 3 (just in front of Àger) and Montsec 4 (between Àger and Noguera Pallaresa).
Visit to the Corçà Coal Mines
On October 21, Kühne visited a coal mine where about 350 men worked. According to him, the coal working and processing system is very primitive. The sieving of coal is done on the basis of “human force”. Kühne is reminded of the same horizon at the top of Montsec (Reguer Mine) with little coal available, with a thickness of about 50 cm. Among the charcoal there are some bivalve and plant shells, but no vertebrates. Kühne takes the opportunity to comment that there are some children on the farm and without any teachers, so the children seem to have learned from the workers.