Ricardo Araújo, a researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico, Centro de Recursos Naturais e Ambiente (CERENA) and Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion (IPFN), organised a citizen science activity in the Algarve, dedicated to fossil hunting. On 4 and 5 May, members of the Explorers Club Portugal discovered bone fragments from the Triassic at sites previously identified by palaeontologists as part of an expedition that took place from 27 April to 5 May.

The Algarve region is still ‘little explored from a palaeontological perspective’, but there is ‘the potential to reveal the origins of dinosaurs and mammals and, therefore, our origins’, explains Ricardo Araújo. The fossils discovered belong to the Upper Triassic period – between 230 and 220 million years old – and ‘the main groups of known animals appeared in the Triassic’, explains the palaeontologist.
The team identified several layers where sediments and material were collected for analysis, and where excavations will be carried out soon. The discoveries of this expedition ‘are enough for the work of the next 20 years”, he predicts.

Ricardo Araújo is one of the authors of a study published in Nature in 2022 that reveals the origin of warm blood in mammals.