Sites of fossilized dinosaurs

Our arrival at the Hwangsan-myeon Dinosaur Footprint site near Haenam didn’t exactly promise a great experience – Giant bright green fibreglass dinosaurs marched across the distant lawns surrounded by fibreglass volcanoes. Elsewhere were small blue dinosaurs sitting kangaroo style with happy smiles on their faces and wearing little jackets. This place was clearly being presented as a family theme park.

We had driven early from our Hanok guesthouse in Mokpo and were the first tourists of the day as we entered soon after 9 am. And we didn’t see any others during the visit. The site was however, full of teams of ladies manicuring the lawns by hand-weeding and teams of men trimming the “cloud forest” conifers with scissors. (We do not understand the economics of the Korean labour market!). But, despite the place’s obvious “Commercial” aspects, we were given our free “over 64 entry” without question.

We ignored the enormous museum up on the hill and set off along a lakeside (once an arm of the sea but now dammed) boardwalk to look for “footprints”. This followed an exposed horizontal sedimentary rock surface which was inclined from left to right under the boardwalk. To the right was a c 5m cliff of un-eroded layers which once covered the now exposed surface upon which the “Dinosaur” tracks were, we hoped, to be found!

We quickly found some rather small marks, which the Korean/Englsh signs stated were made by anthropods and crawling creatures plus some web footed “birds”. Small they may …

The Korean Cretaceous Dinosaur Coast or (KCDC) was nominated under criterion (viii) in 2009. While the nomination was rejected by IUCN, more than a decade later there seems to be resumed interest in a second nomination.

I visited the dinosaur footprints in Goseong (right next to a kid-friendly dinosaur museum). The dinosaur footprints are interesting and numerous, but the beauty of the rugged coast is likely the highlight for many casual visitors. I however was on a mission to see these footprints. I was glad I could make out the footprints and trackways; they are easy to spot because the footprints are usually filled with small pools of water, which comes with the change of tide. Not only were the footprints fairly easy to make out, it was possible to distinguish different dinosaur species amongst the footprints. As a serial property there are other significant footprint locations along the southern coast. There has been new discoveries and there is excitement for a second attempt with IUCN. I would certainly be interested in visiting additional locations when a new nomination file is submitted. Despite the WHC rejection in 2009, these are enjoyable places to visit. Below is a recent update:

From the Article "Korea is a paradise for dinosaur footprints" - December 2022

Context: On November 10th (2022), a press conference for the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage was held at the National Palace Museum of Korea to mark the 40th anniversary of the discovery …