30-million-year-old horse trail found in Cervera

The 30-million-year-old horse trail was discovered this summer (2026) during archaeological work at the Castle of Cervera, in the province of Lleida. The excavation was originally concerned with understanding the history of the medieval site. Nobody appears to have put “find an ancient horse” on the job sheet. Yet there it was.

The fossilised trackway consists of eight footprints extending for around five metres. They were found alongside the foundations of the castle and have survived remarkably well despite the site being altered and built upon repeatedly over the centuries. Specialists from Catalonia’s Department of Culture have examined the discovery, and further analysis is planned to identify the animal more precisely.

Before Cervera had a castle, it had a sea

Around 30 million years ago, the landscape around modern-day Cervera looked nothing like it does today. The area formed part of the shoreline of a large inland sea.

An ancient herbivorous mammal, similar to a horse but smaller, walked across the soft ground beside the water. Its feet pressed into the sediment, leaving tracks behind. Now normally, that would be the end of the story. Rain, water and erosion would have erased those tracks. But occasionally the conditions are just right. Some tracks become buried and eventually turn into fossils. The Cervera footprints appear to be one of those extraordinarily lucky cases.

Palaeontologist Àngel Galobart, director of the Museu de la Conca Dellà, explained that animals were leaving their footprints in the soft substrate along the shore of this ancient inland sea. Some disappeared when the ground became wet again. Others, like these, were preserved.

Thirty million years later, someone digging around a castle found them. History is occasionally very patient.

So was it actually a horse?

Well… kinda. Researchers believe the footprints were made by an extinct member of the equid family, the group that includes modern horses, donkeys and zebras. But it would be misleading to imagine a modern horse wandering around prehistoric Cervera.

This animal was an early relative rather than a horse as we would recognise one today. The researchers currently estimate that it lived sometime during the Oligocene, a geological period spanning roughly 34 to 23 million years ago. The particular animal responsible for these tracks appears to have lived somewhere around 34 to 28 million years ago. Exactly which species made the footprints has not yet been determined.

So, for now, “prehistoric horse-y thing” is probably safer than giving it a name and then having a palaeontologist appear on your Facebook feed in an exciteable mood.

The really remarkable bit

Finding fossil footprints is not especially unusual. Finding them underneath or beside a medieval castle after the site has been extensively modified over the centuries is considerably more interesting.

The researchers say the excellent preservation is one of the most surprising aspects of the discovery. The trackway is also scientifically important because it is the first set of fossil tracks found this far south within the ancient basin that once covered this part of Catalonia. That means the footprints aren’t merely a nice thing for Cervera to put on a tourist leaflet. They could provide new information about what animals lived in this part of the Iberian Peninsula millions of years ago and help researchers understand how far the fauna of that ancient landscape extended. In other words, one prehistoric animal’s decision to go for a little mooch has potentially given scientists a new piece of the local jigsaw.

Cervera itself developed much, much later.

The town grew around a castle on a hill known as Montserè, with the medieval settlement developing from the 11th century onwards. Historical sources document the castle from 1026, and the town subsequently expanded around it.

So, in chronological terms, the site has had quite a career. 

• First there was an inland sea. Then an ancient horse-y thing (equid) trotted along its shore.
• Then roughly 30 million years passed.
• Eventually humans turned up, built a castle and started doing human-y things.
• And now archaeologists are digging beside that castle and discovering that the land had already been keeping a much older story underneath it.

Cervera is currently celebrating its millennium, which seems like an excellent excuse to remind everyone that, technically, the town is a mere whipper-snapper. The fossilised footprints are about 30,000 times older than the medieval Cervera commemorations.

A final word from the horse

Well, obviously don’t know what the animal was doing. Perhaps it was heading towards the water. Perhaps it was looking for food. Perhaps it was simply going for a walk and had no idea that millions of years later a team of archaeologists would uncover its footprints and make a considerable fuss about them.

I like to think it simply had somewhere to be.