September 30, 2016:
Ankylosaurian trackways are rare in the Cretaceous red beds of China, and in Asia, in general. Here we report on a possible thyreophoran (ankylosaurian) trackway from the Jiaguan Formation of Sichuan Province, China inferred from an important historical (1970s) report, the first dealing with tracks from this formation. The Jiaguan Formation has recently become well known for an abundance of saurischian-dominated tracksites, indicating that the 1970s report is anomalous. Nevertheless, the record describes a trackway, which represents a large animal with a wide pes up to ~41 cm and a transverse morphology (length/width ~0.8). The trackway is unusual because of the lack of visible manus tracks, perhaps due to preservational factors. The rarity of such trackway morphotypes in China is attributed to the facies preference of Cretaceous ankylosaurians for organic-rich coastal plain substrates,which abound in North America where ankylosaur dominated ichnofacies have been defined.
Xing, L.D., McCrea, R.T., Lockley, M.G., Lu, T.Q., Burns, M.E., Peng, G.Z., Zhang, J.P. (2016)
A possible ankylosaurian (Thyreophora) trackway from the Lower Cretaceous Jiaguan Formation of Emei, southwest China: paleoecological implications.
Sullivan, R.M. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2016, Fossil Record 5. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 74: 339–343
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