During the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, it is said that there were three major lakes in Gyeongsang Province alone, and to this day, traces of such lakes can be found in the Namhae coastal area. Such traces are particularly distinct in Uhangri, Haenam-gun. The Uhangri area had originally been a part of the sea, but this changed when the Damsuho Lake and surrounding area was formed by the building of the Geumho Tide Embankment. This lake has a sea cliff that is 3-4 meters high, stretches about 5km in length, and is made up of sedimentary rock formed during the Cretaceous age. Embedded in the rock around the lake are footprints of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and water birds that lived in this area tens of millions of years ago. There is no other place in the world where footprint fossils of all these different dinosaurs were found in a single area. The footprint fossil of a pterosaur discovered in this area is the largest in the world at a length of 20-35cm. Also, the footprint fossil of a bird with webbed feet showed that the bird lived in the Cretaceous period, which is at least around 20-30 million years earlier than the Eocene of the Cenozoic era discovered in the US.
