Meco and Cabo Espichel

When he finally arrived, she was already worshipping a miraculous image of Our Lady. Some versions of the legend say the Virgin appeared in a cove down below, Praia dos Lagosteiros, riding a donkey. The animal climbed the near-vertical cliff, leaving hoof prints in the rock along the way, until it stopped on the very spot where the Chapel of Memory stands today.

The rock became known as Pedra da Mua. Because 'mua' is an old, now obsolete, Portuguese word for mule.

Now for the ironic part. And it's an irony this place holds with a seriousness it almost doesn't deserve: the marks that medieval faith identified as the sacred mule's hoof prints are actually dinosaur tracks.

Sauropods. 30-ton creatures with necks that could reach 10 meters. Since 1944, paleontologists have identified 38 sauropod and 2 theropod tracks in that limestone rock. When medieval pilgrims revered those marks, the concept of a dinosaur didn't even exist.

And then (and this is the part that's almost impossible to believe) when they commissioned the blue and white tile panels that decorate the inside of the Chapel of Memory in the 18th century, they painted scenes from the legend. They painted the mule climbing the cliff. They painted the tracks.

Without realizing it, they created what might be the first human pictorial record of dinosaur tracks anywhere in the world. Faith produced scientific documentation without even knowing it.

The Chapel of Memory was built in the 15th century, on the exact spot where the legend says the image was found. And its architecture is also fascinating: it seems to draw inspiration from Islamic maqams or marabouts, small devotional shrines that the Moors spread across the Iberian Peninsula.

In other words: you're looking at a Christian building, based on a Muslim model, in a possibly pre-Christian site, where for centuries people worshipped the tracks of animals that have been extinct for millions of years.

If this didn't exist, no one could have made it up.