Bendricks dinosaur trackways ◄ Back Next ► Picture 1 of 6 Bendricks dinosaur trackways Steve Howe shares his fascinating geological insights into The Bendricks, where Lily Wilder recently hit national news with her dinosaur footprint fossil find, as featured on the BBC website. The coast between Cardiff and Barry exposes a wonderful succession of 220-200 million year old Upper Triassic rocks.  Around Penarth and Lavernock, just to the west of Cardiff, these Triassic rocks were initially laid down in a large freshwater lake. This was gradually inundated by the sea so that the deposits become increasingly marine as you go up through the succession and pass into the overlying Blue Lias (Jurassic).  Many of these rocks can be very fossiliferous as we have found on Rockwatch trips along this stretch of coast. However, a little further west, between Sully and Barry, the same aged Upper Triassic rocks are very different.  Here they consist of a series of generally red and buff-coloured siltstones, mudstones with greyer coloured sandstones and conglomerates.  These were laid down on a desert floor close to the edge of the large lake/sea.  Inland, across what is today the Vale of Glamorgan and the coalfield, the land rose up into a series of ancient hills and mountains from which a series of wadis led down onto the desert floor. Although the climate was predominantly hot and arid there were torrential downpours from time to time.  The rain falling on the uplands tore down the wadis and at...