Site archéologique de la phosphatière du Cloup d'Aural

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

In the last thirty years of the 19th century, the exploitation of phosphate naturally stored in the form of apatite in the Quercy paleokarst became famous under the designation "Quercy phosphorite". This international renown is due to the presence of numerous vertebrate fossils living in the tertiary era, between the end of the Eocene and the end of the Oligocene (15 million years) and which, for some of them, served as international reference for the standard sequence of European faunas. The phosphate workings of Cloup d'Aural, located at the centre of a network of phosphate pockets of the Causse de Limogne, benefits from a state of preservation which allows the logic of exploitation of these sediments to be reconstructed. Of large size (170 m. in length for a depth of some twenty metres), it presents significant diversity of witnesses to exploitation and external buildings in fairly good condition.