Wednesday 23 April 2014

Tracks, tracks...everywhere (3)

I don't know if I have been clear enough, so far. This cape Kamenjak track site is NEW and has not been described yet. Nobody has noticed nor detected these Cenomanian dinosaur tracks. I call it "Kamenjak 3".
I've been analysing my photographs from this site and the site that was described to a certain degree in Fabio's (Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia) paper (Grakalovac promontory), which I have named "Kamenjak1" and all my finds lead to this conclusion: In Cenomanian (late Cretaceous), Istria was a part of a large piece of land (Adriatic Dinaridic Carbonate Platform - ADCP) sustaining viable populations of various types of big dinosaurs. It was either a very large island or still Afro-Arabic  peninsula. Not only that I speculate that a large tyreophoran track is present on Grakalovac (see my previous posts), but it seems quite big ankylosaur was present on this new site, too. While this is still just a possibility because the tracks are poorly preserved (one is outlined, while the other is under my foot), the  theropod footprint beside them speaks for itself. The largest one was some 73 cm long. The print is shallow, because the substrate was already quite dry when it was made, so it effected the mud cracks. The "owner" of the foot must have measured at least 9-10 meters in length! I have outlined the probable prints.


Here is the size and shape comparison of the theropod tracks from "Kamenjak 3" site (red bar is 12cm long). The largest footprint is from the photograph above.





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