ROUTE 2 WAYPOINT 13

 Waypoint 13. Loose rudists and oven  (Map Route 2)

Following the path towards the village we cross the reef again, this time erosion has allowed some fossils to be better preserved. We can now see abundant Radiolites cut in section with the inside of their empty shell, the marked conical shape and we can intuit the outer shell in the shape of a "gypsy skirt".

Castrojimeno has an exceptionally rich geological heritage, due to the excellent state of preservation of its fossils and the usefulness of the sedimentary record as a whole for palaeoenvironmental and even sequential interpretation. In other words, not only the fossils but all the sediments and geological elements of the environment (and the relationship with other surrounding areas) allow us to analyse different oscillations in sea level and even to understand changes in the climate 80 million years ago (Gil et al., 2009; García-Hidalgo et al., 2012; Gil et al., 2012; Font et al., 2013...), which makes Castrojimeno a point of reference for many geologists.

We return via a small stairway to the urbanised area, but here, apart from the reef itself, we can see something curious: an oven next to a house. A traditional clay and straw oven located on a kind of "terrace" where bread was possibly baked. The town of Castrojimeno may have had these ovens in many houses, but the passage of time and the remodelling of the houses has meant that practically all of them have been lost, except for some like this one.