[dinosaur] Dinosaur tracks from the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. Hebei Province, China

Ben Creisler
[email protected]

A new paper:

Lida Xing, Martin G. Lockley, Tianming Du, Lijun Zhang, Hendrik Klein,
Anthony Romilio, W. Scott Persons IV, Kuan Wang, Zhenyu Li &  Xiaoqiao Wan
(2019)
Dinosaur tracks from the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary Tuchengzi Formation
(Hebei Province, China) used as building stones in the Chengde imperial
summer resort: age, ichnology, and history.
Cretaceous Research (advance online publication)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1016_j.cretres.2019.104310&d=DwIBaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=gEAqg5JJ7XUlJwG9UfPDceGIp81yzNrATGfwL6f2Pks&s=nUpveJ-sMFLNqKjdOGvJXC-r-52hbHil8A52Muj-Zvk&e= 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedirect.com_science_article_pii_S0195667119302095&d=DwIBaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=gEAqg5JJ7XUlJwG9UfPDceGIp81yzNrATGfwL6f2Pks&s=axHJFo5-dG5pCgqWsBiBGOWfvnAfrfBLJDPe_8kQbXU&e= 



Slabs with tetrapod tracks from the Madigou Village quarry in the Tuchengzi
Formation have famously been used as building stones at the imperial summer
resort locality, also referred to in the ichnological literature as
the"Chengde Summer Palace."The Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary Tuchengzi
Formation has elsewhere in the region yielded differently composed
ichnofaunas with non-avian and avian theropod and sauropod tracks. The
Madigou assemblage is remarkable because it shows the co-occurrence of
abundant and diverse non-avian and avian theropod tracks. The non-avian
theropod tracks are mostly Grallator- and Eubrontes-like with a few that
registered faint hallux traces. A small number of didactyl
deinonychosaurian tracks were recognized which we here label as
Velociraptorichnus isp. The avian theropod tracks can tentatively be
referred to Aquatilavipes and Koreanaornis, with wide digit divarications.
Growing geochronological and biostratigraphic evidence suggests that these
are among the oldest known bird tracks, similar in age to Pullornipes, also
from the Tuchengzi Formation in northeastern China and dating close to the
Tithonian-Berriasian boundary. Theropod tracks are dominating, even if an
isolated possible sauropod track and some questionable tridactyl imprints
that could either represent theropods or ornithopods, may indicate the
presence of further dinosaur groups. The Tuchengzi ichnofauna is important
because of the stratigraphic age close to the famous Jehol Biota.