Chongqing found dinosaur footprints trotting "tracers" or Chinese dragons

Source: West China Metropolis Daily

On June 1, the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources released the news that in March 2019, climbing enthusiasts found a pile of "chicken claw marks" in the sand man air raid shelter in the eastern part of Chongqing Geleshan National Forest Park, which was initially identified by a team of paleontologist experts organized by the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources as a theropod dinosaur footprint group born in the Lower Jurassic Pearl Punch Formation 190 million years ago.

The study was jointly completed by Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Dai Hui, senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Institute of Geological Relics Protection, and Wei Guangbiao, research librarian of Chongqing Institute of Geological Survey.

The latest results were published in the well-known British sci journal "Historical Biology" with the scientific paper "the early jurassic kayentapus dominated tracks from chongqing, china", which confirmed that the dinosaur footprint is kayentapus and can be classified into its model species, the Kayentapus hopii. The best preserved Jurassic Card Tower Footprints for Asia. The "Tracemaker" is likely to be a Chinese dragon What is the Kayan Tower Footprint? The Kayanta footprint originally referred to the genus name of a larger ( about 35 cm ) three-toed bipedal walking theropod dinosaur footprint , a theropod dinosaur first found in the Lower Jurassic formation of Arizona, USA.

The Kayan Tower footprint is characterized by the fact that the thumb toe imprint is not retained, and the metatarsal pad imprint of the fourth finger is retained, which is completely separated from the rest of the imprint. Compared to the Shrivelosaurus footprint, the Kayan Tower footprint has a narrower and finer feature, but the toe part fork is wider and has a different pretriangular structure.

Dai Hui, senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Institute of Geological Relics Protection, introduced that the footprints of the Card Rock Tower are widely distributed in the Jurassic strata of North America, northeast Europe, Africa and Asia around the world, and China is mainly distributed in the Lower Jurassic strata of Lufeng, Jinning, Sichuan, and Panxi, Sichuan, and Zizhou, Shaanxi. In North America, the "tracers" of the Kayan Tower footprints are theropods or basal stem-tailed dragons, which lived in the early Jurassic period of the world and were one of the first large carnivorous dinosaurs to appear. In China, especially in the southwest, the "tracemaker" of the Kayan Pagoda footprint is likely to be a Chinese dragon. With two crowns on its head, about 5.6 meters long and weighing up to half a ton, the Chinese dragon was a ferocious large carnivorous dinosaur.

"Although the footprints of Kayan Pagoda are widely distributed around the world, no conclusive Footprints of Kayan Pagodas have been found in Asia." Dai Hui said that the dinosaur footprint group found in Gele Mountain in Chongqing has confirmed that the dinosaur footprint is a card rock tower footprint and can be classified into its model species, the Huo's card rock tower footprint, which is the best preserved Jurassic card rock tower footprint group in Asia. The dinosaur footprint group, located on two quartz sandstone surfaces about 3 meters apart, had a total of 46 three-toed theropod footprints. Among them, the surface of the first layer contains 7 traces consisting of a total of 32 footprints, another 12 isolated footprints, and the second layer has a total of 2 isolated footprints. The footprints of the 7 tracks in the first layer average 24.1 cm, the largest footprint is 35 cm long and the smallest footprint is 16 cm long. Based on the relative stride length of the measured footprints, it is speculated that they were created by large and medium-sized theropod dinosaurs, and the "tracer" was doing a trot at the time.

It is reported that after the discovery of the dinosaur footprint group, Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Dai Hui, senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Institute of Geological Relics Protection, Wei Guangbiao, research librarian of Chongqing Geological Survey Institute, and other experts and scholars jointly participated in the completion of the research.

Dai Hui said that the discovery of the dinosaur footprint group in Gele Mountain in Chongqing has enriched the records of the Kayan Pagoda footprint group in China and even Asia, and further proved that the footprints of lower Jurassic dinosaurs in Asia and even the world are mostly theropod dinosaur footprints, and the diversity of footprint morphological types is consistent, which is of great significance for studying the distribution and evolution of dinosaur fauna in the early Jurassic period in China.