Photo : Patrice78500 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Les Falaises des Vaches Noires
The Vaches Noires cliffs stretch 4.5 kilometres along the Côte Fleurie, in Calvados, in the communes of Houlgate, Gonneville-sur-Mer, Auberville and Villers-sur-Mer. About a hundred metres high, they show at the base Jurassic marls and limestones (Callovian and Oxfordian) topped with white Cretaceous chalk. Erosion has shaped a badlands relief there, with gullies and mudflows.
It is one of the richest fossil sites in France. As early as the early eighteenth century, remains of crocodilians, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were found there, and Abbé Bacheley obtained the first dinosaur remains discovered in France, studied by Cuvier. Ammonites abound. The name comes from the chalk blocks fallen on the beach, blackened by algae, which look like cows seen from above. The site has been listed since 1995; the beach is explored at low tide.
