Day 1: Digne and the Bès valley

Mule track in the 19th century, the road to Barles is today the departmental 900 A. Imagine its construction by men only armed with iron bars and explosives, working for 30 years in a hostile environment because of the cold and strong floods.

This road has a history of 300 million years and passes through the Dalle aux ammonites and the famous clues of Pérouré, Barles and Verdaches. The landscape dominated by a complex of cliffs bears witness to the disappearance of an ocean, the remains of which conceal significant deposits of fossils which bear witness to past environments.

To find out more, discover the thematic sheet "Dalle aux ammonites" and "Les clues de Haute Provence".

Watch a virtual reality sequence at the Verdaches clue!

Clue de Peruré
Location: On the D900A road after Esclangon

Verdaches Clue
Location: On the D7 towards Auzet after Barles

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The Ammonites

Cephalopod molluscs (like the dry, nautilus and octopus), they have a shell coiled in a spiral. Partitioned, it serves as their float. Nautilus still exist today. Ammonites, on the other hand, disappeared 66 million years ago.

The ammonites which populated all the seas of the Secondary Era disappeared with the end of this one, 65 Ma ago. Remarkable for the great variety of their forms, their ornamentation, they are excellent temporal indices allowing to date the rock layers.

These fossils have been studied since Roman times. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist who lived between 23 and 79 AD, describes them as the horn of Ammon (hence the name "ammonites"), one of the most important gods of the Ancient Egypt. Ammon is often depicted as a ram or as a man with a ram's head.