Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications
Accessibility Remediation
If you are unable to use this item in its current form due to accessibility barriers, you may request remediation through our remediation request form.
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2015
Citation
Annales Societatis Geologorum Poloniae (2015), vol. 85: 515–525
Abstract
The newly discovered White Mesa tracksite in the Burro Canyon Formation represents a snap shot of a diverse, Lower Cretaceous dinosaur fauna from south-eastern Utah. The tracks were found at a construction site where the sand stone had been bull dozed and broken up. All tracks were found as deep, well-preserved natural casts on the under side of the sand stone slabs. Individual theropod tracks are 19–57 cm in length; one peculiar track shows evidence of a possible pathological swelling in the middle of digit III and an apparently didactyl track is tentatively as signed to a dromaeosaurid. Individual sauropod tracks are found with pes lengths of 36–72 cm, and interestingly, three distinct shapes of manus tracks, ranging from wide banana shaped to rounded and hoof-like. Ornithopods are represented with individual tracks 18–37 cm in length; a single track can possibly be attributed to the thyreophoran ichnogenus Deltapodus. Zircon U-Pb dating places the track-bearing layer in the Barremian, contemporary to the lower Yellow Cat Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation, which has a similar faunal composition based on both tracks and body fossils. This new track-fauna demonstrates the existence of a diverse dinosaurian assemblage in the lower part of the Burro Canyon Formation, which hitherto is not known to yield skeletal remains.
Comments
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14241/asgp.2015.034