The Pyrenees mountains separating France and Spain have long been a crossing route for smugglers of all kinds of wares, which today range from cigarettes to elvers. But the 623-kilometre-long border between the two countries, definitively traced in 1866, has also never been a barrier for the centuries-old exchanges, local alliances and regulations established between the communities living on either side. Emmanuel Riondé reports.
Partial skeletal remains found in the Pyrenees mountains along a line between the French and Spanish border has been identified by DNA analysis as being that of British hiker Esther Dingley, 37, who mysteriously disappeared in the region in November 2020.
Scientists believe a conch shell found in a cave of prehistoric paintings in the French Pyrenees and which since 1931 remained largely forgotten in a French museum, is likely to be a musical intrument dating from around 18,000 years ago due to modifications to the shell which have only recently been studied.
A farmer working his land in south-west France discovered the skull of a massive four-tusked ancestor of the elephant believed to have roamed the Pyrenees millions of years ago but kept his exceptional find secret for two years for fear that his property would become an excavation site, the Natural History Museum of Toulouse has revealed.
