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TOPIC: Dinosaur Footprints


L

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Swimming Dinosaur
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An extraordinary underwater trackway with 12 consecutive prints provides the most compelling evidence to-date that some dinosaurs were swimmers. The 15-meter-long trackway, located in La Virgen del Campo track site in Spain's Cameros Basin, contains the first long and continuous record of swimming by a non-avian therapod dinosaur.
A team led by Rubén Ezquerra, Fundación Patrimonio Paleontológico de La Rioja, La Rioja, Spain, discovered the prints in an area long known for its abundance of terrestrial dinosaur trackways dating from the early Cretaceous 125 million years ago. The team's findings are reported in the June issue of GEOLOGY, published by the Geological Society of America.
The trackway consists of 6 asymmetrical pairs of 2-3 scratch marks each. Each set of scratch marks, preserved in a layer of sandstone, averages approximately 50 centimetres in length and 15 centimetres wide. The spacing between them suggests an underwater stride of 243-271 centimetres.

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L

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RE: Smallest Dinosaur Footprint
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Ancient footprints have provided compelling evidence that some dinosaurs were able to swim, scientists report.
The 15m  trackway that reveals one animal's underwater odyssey was discovered in the Cameros Basin in Spain, once a vast lake.
The S-shaped prints suggest the beast clawed at sediment on the lake floor as it swam in about 3m (10ft) of water.
The marks are about 125 million years old, dating to the Early Cretaceous, the team writes in the journal Geology.

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L

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Chongqing Footprints
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Chinese scientists have discovered over one hundred dinosaur footprints within 75 square meters, on a mountainside in Chongqing municipality, southwest China.
The former curator of the Chongqing Museum of Natural History, Zhou Shiwu, and five other researchers found the fossilised footprints at the Laoyingshan mountain last October.
The footprints range in size from 11 centimetres to 35 centimetres long, with shapes similar to clubs, chicken paws, disks and three-toes. The steps range from tens of centimetres to 1.6 meters.
Zhou Shiwu recently sent written authentication to the local government, saying this is the first discovery of dinosaur footprints from a Cretaceous period layer in southwest China. They were formed 100 million years ago.

Source China Daily

Image Credit ChongQing Evening News

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L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Baby stegosaurus tracks
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About 150 million years ago, two turkey-sized stegosaur babies squished their toes into a riverbank in what is now Colorado's foothills.
Their tiny tracks - a bit bigger than a quarter - quickly filled with silt, preserving the first footprints ever discovered of baby stegosaurs hatched just hours or days before.

"Stegosaur tracks are extremely rare, and these infant tracks are unbelievable" - Matt Mossbrucker, who found the tracks.

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L

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Mexican Dinosaur Footprints
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A Mexican man has discovered dozens of dinosaur footprints dating back up to 110-million years along the banks of a dried river, scientists said on Tuesday.
Biologist Oscar Polaco said the footprints, found by a local resident in a desert region in central Mexico, belonged to three prehistoric species that came to drink water in the area, once a swampy zone close to the sea.
Polaco said more studies needed to be done to determine what species of dinosaur the fossilised prints, each one up to 60cm across, belonged to.

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L

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RE: Smallest Dinosaur Footprint
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(old news)
A Stegosaurus fossil has been discovered in Europe, marking the first time the famous plated dinosaur has been found outside of North America.
The find supports a widely accepted ide[a that the two continents were once connected by a series of temporary land bridges which surfaced when sea levels dipped, allowing dinosaurs to cross.

Both coasts were very close and the basins between them could emerge occasionally” - study leader Fernando Escaso of the University of Autonoma in Madrid, Spain.

During the first half of dinosaurs’ 185-million-year reign on Earth, all of the world’s continents were clumped together into one giant landmass called Pangaea. At the end of the Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago, the supercontinent began slowly splintering: North America, Europe and Africa began to drift apart, and in the widening rift between them, the Atlantic Ocean was born.

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L

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Dinosaur Footprint
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A Trail of panels explaining, among other things, where to find dinosaur footprints in Skye and Lochalsh was unveiled yesterday.

The nine panels also describe the collision of ancient continents, explore the history of Skye marble, explain a coral beach on Skye and tell the story of how earth from Lealt was once used to produce dynamite to export to South Africa.
Highland councillor Bill Fulton said the panels underlined the importance of the area's geology for people and wildlife.

"The geology of Skye and Lochalsh is one of the things that make this area unique with its magnificent landscapes created out of the bare rocks. This interpretation trail will not only be a great facility for the many tourists to our area but I am sure it will inform the locals too of our geological history" - Bill Fulton .

The nine panels unveiled by Mr Fulton are at Kilt Rock, Lealt Gorge, Old Man of Storr, Scorrybreac, Coral Beach, Dun Beag near Struan, Calum Robertson Memorial, Kylerhea narrows and the Plock of Kyle.

Source P & J

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L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Dinosaur Footprints
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The small town of Morrison in Colorado has again yielded big scientific finds as historians this week announced a new collection of dinosaur fossils and footprints dating back 150 million years, before the Rocky Mountains formed.

Matt Mossbrucker, dinosaur researcher and director of the Morrison Natural History Museum, said two years of work in an old fossil mine in an area dubbed Dinosaur Ridge uncovered important finds overlooked for decades.

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L

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One of the most exciting dinosaur finds to date comes from Scotland. In the Isle of Skye, Paul Booth and Dugald Ross, found a set of fossilised footprints. Inside one of the footprints was another tiny fossil footprint that has turned out to be one of the most exciting finds in Scotland.

dinkydinosaur 

 Dinosaur traces were not found in Scotland until recently. The first bone, from an adult Diplodocus-like dinosaur, was found in 1982. Since then progress has been steady, but slow, with the odd bone or fossil turning up regularly. The richest seam for dinosaur bones and fossils is on the Isle of Skye, where most of the bones have been found. Around the famous Kilt rocks are middle Jurassic period stone (approximately 165 million years old) which sometimes break off to reveal bones from that period. So far amateur fossil-hunters have turned up a bone from a Ceratosauria (similar to the more well-known Coelophysis, a meat-eating bird-like dinosaur) and bones from a Stegosaurus-type beast.

dinkydinosaurskye2 

During the Middle Jurassic, the Isle of Skye looked more like what the Camargue region of southern France is today. Dinosaur walked in family groups along the shores of large lagoons, leaving behind their footprints in the soft, wet sand. Meat eating dinosaurs prowled in search of their prey, teaching their young the skills they would need as they grew older. A baby dinosaur, just hatched, would follow in the footsteps of its parent, perhaps only a short distance from the nest.

"The problem with Skye is that the Jurassic rocks are topped by about 20-30 metre thick volcanic rocks, which is very hard. So you can't get at the remains. You have to wait for the fossil to fall out of the cliffs" - Dr Neil Clark, Curator of Palaeontology at Glasgows Universitys Hunterian Museum.

dinky-adult-footprintThis fossil shows the footprint of the adult dinosaur, with the baby dinosaurs print clearly visible within the adult outline. By comparing the length of this footprint, a minuscule 1.78 centimetres, to the length of the adult, 25 centimetres, Clark was confident that he was looking at a dinosaur less than a month old.

"This could be the first evidence of parental care of the Therapod dinosaur" - Dr Neil Clark.

The Universitys Hunterian Museum now holds the worlds smallest dinosaur footprints in its collections. The footprint appears to belong to a young dinosaur similar to Coelophysis, and is imprinted onto the footprint of an adult dinosaur of the same kind. The chance discovery was only made when Dr Clark returned from Skye , where he was researching other dinosaur footprints with the curator of the Staffin Museum, Dugald Ross, and fellow researcher Paul Booth of Pitlochry.

dinky-dinosaur-big "I collected the other, larger footprint on a piece of sandstone, but became aware of the tiny baby footprint when I started to measure the adult print. I didnt realise what I had and I certainly never expected to find such a small footprint. It had always been assumed that dinosaurs of this type remained within, or near to, their nests until they were much larger." - Dr Neil Clark. Research continues on these discoveries and it is hoped that further evidence will reveal which dinosaur that made these footprints and perhaps where it nested.

Source



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