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More on Pula ankylosaurs

I have discovered the second site containing ankylosaur tracks (dinoturbation) near Pula about a year after the first one, which is about a kilometre away. It is interesting, but this time I thought I was looking at the single theropod footprint. Yet, it didn't seem right. It didn't look like a typical theropod footprint. Nearby was the second impression, only convex (infilling). The pace angle was too wide for a theropod. I have also noticed there were in fact 5 toe impressions. The print was obviously left by a quadrupedal animal: a large ankylosaur. Later, I have discovered more foot impressions of the same animal, or the animal of the same size.

The red outline of the best preserved impressions in the ankylosaur trackway.

Another foot impression ( right hind foot - pes) of the large Sauropelta-like dinosaur on the same outcrop. This one is not part of the trackway above (red outline is my interpretation).

Click to enlarge.

Some Istrian tracks and fossils

This is a piece of a Cretaceous rudist reef I have found on the dry wall somewhere near Banjole in southern Istria. There were even larger pieces of these extinct mollusks. Some big ones reminded me of the elephant tusks. They were to big for me to take them with me.

 In the photograph below is another strange track from one of Pula's beaches. I am not what is it exactly. Was it a small theropod track or a sea bird footprint? It even seems to have been left by a webbed foot.

Observe the possible resemblance with the recent sea gull tracks in the cement.

A theropod track from Solaris outcrop

"The field work in the late Albian track site of the Solaris Campground near Cervera/Červar (Torre/Tar municipality, Istria, Croatia) was undertaken during the years 1995-96 thanks to a grant of The Dinosaur Society and the collaboration of the local authorities. The field work at the site has been described in DALLA VECCHIA (1996). A description of the site before the cleaning of the main footprint-bearing surface and its detailed mapping and description can be seen in DALLA VECCHIA (1994). The detailed description has been published by DALLA VECCHIA et al. (2000)."
What's interesting about the Solaris track sites is that they are represented with relatively small dinosaur tracks. Dalla Vecchia speculates that the dinosaurs were of a diminutive size due to their habitat. They lived isolated on an island, whose resources couldn't provide for the "full-size" large dinosaurs that inhabited the mainlands. On the other hand, although roughly from the same age and just some 40-50km away, dinosaur tracks from Pula beaches are of many size classes, the biggest of which are among the world record breakers.

In the image below, you can see one of small theropod tracks from the Solaris beach. Red outline is my interpretation. This one wasn't described in any paper, yet.

There is probably more than one footprint in this image, but I have outlined only the best one.

Fossils or what? (2)

Posting my question about the mystery traces from a beach in Pula, on The Fossil forum has been fruitful.
The homescar of a limpet would be a perfect answer for the circles, if the place wasn't so far from the tidal zone. They don't come so high and far away from the water. Only very high waves can reach this place. However, I could imagine a loose limpet being tossed away by some very powerful wave ending on this place. Or maybe somebody has brought a limpet there.
A man made origin, like some sort of stand or support with metal feet is another interesting and plausible answer to the riddle. It could have been from some military installation, because the whole Pula area has been fortified as the main naval harbour (at first built and founded as  österreichische Kriegsmarine oder k. k. Kriegsmarine) for over a century. Many forts are still present.
The spot in the photo marked with yellow question mark looks like a man made artifact.

The photograph below is taken at the same place, a few feet further. Red outline is a possible dinosaur footprint.

 

 The naval base in Pula in 19th century.

Fossils or what?(1)

This is a photograph was taken on the beach near Pula a few years ago. The rocks are of the early Cretaceous age (late Albian), I really can't figure out what has happened here around 100 million years ago. You can see some strange long groove-like traces (?) and five circles in a row in the centre of the photograph. Tip of my shoe is at the bottom of the photo for scale.
There are also some rudist fragments, some large ripple marks and possibly theropod footprints near by (not shown in this photograph).

Albian sauropods and maybe even stegosaurs (2)

There are more seemingly three-toed, oval pes prints scattered around one of the dinoturbations near Pula. They can be noticed among the obvious sauropod tracks. An example is in the bottom photograph with my red outline speculative interpretation. Could it be the  stegosaur Deltapodus ichnogenus? I can't tell for sure. It could be a sauropod or an ankylosaur of the different morphotype from the ones I have found earlier or just the result of the different dynamics in the print making. This natural cast is just about 15 meters away from the one from my previous post (in the upper photograph). It's of the roughly the same size as well.
Here is my "fantasy" scene from Pula mudflats soon after a tempest (which has left a brecciated surface), some 100 million years ago. A lone, late surviving stegosaur is walking carefully along the slippery muddy shore. It looks like Wuerhosaurus. A pterosaur flies by. Soon, a herd of large sauropods will occupy the terrain, obliterating most of the previous tracks.

Albian sauropods and maybe even stegosaurs (1)

The late Albian sediments in Pula have many sauropod footprints preserved. Below are a couple of examples from different parts of the beach. These tracks are a few kilometers apart and yet they are roughly the same size and of similar shape. What is bugging me, however, is a possibility that these might be a thyreophoran instead of sauropod. While I have found quite a few thyreophoran-ankylosaur tracks in Pula (see my previous posts), these may have belonged to a stegosaur (Deltapodus ichnospecies). This is a pure speculation, because only a few questionable remains of stegosaurs originate from the mid-Cretaceous. By that time, it seems that stegosaurs mostly went extinct as a group. One of the last surviving genera was the Chinese Wuerhosaurus. It doesn't mean that there is no chance some later surviving one might be discovered in the years to come. The print in the bottom photograph is 62 cm long.

Here are some examples of the ichnospecies Deltapodus brodricki, some having manus print preserved and some not (from Whyte and Romano 2001).

In the photograph below is the stegosaur pes track (natural cast) from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) from Colunga (Asturias, North Spain), that is housed in the Jurassic Museum of Asturias (Museo del Jurásico de Asturias (MUJA)). Print has three short, blunt and digits forward orientated. It was  assigned this and other similar footprints to Deltapodus.
Size: 55 cm in length and 43 cm in width. It represents the largest stegosaur print discovered so far.

There were also huge sauropod tracks found in Asturias. Some measuring 110 cm in lenght. Some of the sauropod prints from Pula are even larger. I have measured the pes print that was 138 cm long (see my previous posts).

Deja vu: "Chicken from Hell"

I don't know who coined this fossil "Chicken from Hell", but I am sure the media had to invent an "attractive" title for the dinosaur discovery, to make it stand out from the rest of the gloomy news from the World and yet fit into the mood. Since the fossil in question is from the famous Hell Creek formation and looks a lot like a mutant chicken, armed with the nasty hand claws, the title is quite appropriate. The only thing about the "news" is that it is not so new.
In fact, the CNHM paleontologist Matt Lamanna and the other authors have finally  published a paper that presents the first decent look into the complete morphology of caenagnathids.
Anzu wyliei was a peculiar looking, bird-like dinosaur that had a bony crest on top of a beaky head and relatively short tail for a theropod.
The animal has been identified from the partial remains of three skeletons collected in North and South Dakota that have been known for a while. In fact, my restoration of this caenagnathid in the image below is about 10 or more years old.
When all fossils are combined, about 80% of the skeleton is now known. Which is incredibly complete by the paleontologists standards. The animal lived some 66 million years ago in the biota where Tyrannosaurus rex was the top predator. Being 5ft high at the hips (150 cm), the giant "chicken" presented a danger for the smaller dinosaurs and other tetrapods of the time.
All three Anzu skeletons are housed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, which collaborated with the Smithsonian to identify the new species.
Here is the free paper:
 Matthew C. Lamanna, Hans-Dieter Sues, Emma R. Schachner & Tyler R. Lyson (2014) A New Large-Bodied Oviraptorosaurian Theropod Dinosaur from the Latest Cretaceous
of Western North America. PLoS ONE 9(3): e92022. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092022

  Abstract: The oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur clade Caenagnathidae has long been enigmatic due to the incomplete nature of nearly all described fossils. Here we describe Anzu wyliei gen. et sp. nov., a new taxon of large-bodied caenagnathid based primarily on three well-preserved partial skeletons. The specimens were recovered from the uppermost Cretaceous (upper Maastrichtian) Hell Creek Formation of North and South Dakota, and are therefore among the stratigraphically youngest known oviraptorosaurian remains. Collectively, the fossils include elements from most regions of the skeleton, providing a wealth of information on the osteology and evolutionary relationships of Caenagnathidae. Phylogenetic analysis reaffirms caenagnathid monophyly, and indicates that Anzu is most closely related to Caenagnathus collinsi, a taxon that is definitively known only from a mandible from the Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta. The problematic oviraptorosaurs Microvenator and Gigantoraptor are recovered as basal caenagnathids, as has previously been suggested. Anzu and other caenagnathids may have favored well-watered floodplain settings over channel margins, and were probably ecological generalists that fed upon vegetation, small animals, and perhaps eggs.

My old restoration of the caenagnathid (Krzic 2002?)

Another link to the news.

Histriasaurus: the basal rebbachisaurid from Istria

The dinosaur bone bed near Bale

There are only three dinosaur species (two genera) from Croatia, that were properly described and named. Both of the new genera holotypes were determined and named by the Italian paleontologist Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia. While one of them is an ichnospecies, Titanosaurimanus nana (Dalla Vecchia & Tarlao, 2000), based solely on its tracks, the other one is based on the fossil bones. It was a mid-sized rebbachisaurid Histriasaurus boscarollii (Dalla Vecchia, 1998)

Rebbachisauridae was a family of sauropod dinosaurs known from fragmentary fossil remains from the Cretaceous of South America, Africa, and Europe.

 In the photo is the small museum Ulika in an old town Bale, in  Istria, Croatia, where the holotype of Histriasaurus and the rest of the Croatian dinosaur fossils are housed. The dinosaur fossil site is just a couple of kilometres away. The dinosaur undersea graveyard is still a sort of terra incognita, because there was no funding for extensive excavation and research. Matt Lamanna told me there were attempts of getting funded form the National Geographic, but so far unsuccessful. Hopefully, the research in Bale will resume, soon.

A few rebbachisaurid dorsal vertebrae comparison (not exactly to scale): the Spanish Demandasaurus darwini (Fernández-Baldor et al.), 2011 - photo ©Fidel Torcida, the fossil housed at  EL Museo de Dinosaurios de Salas de los Infantes (A), the African Rebbachisaurus garasbae (Lavocat, 1954) - photo by ©Muséum National d’Histoire Natural where the fossil is housed (B), the Croatian Histriasaurus boscarollii (Dalla Vecchia, 1998) - photo by B. Krzic (C). 

An article on new Spanish rebbachisaurid.


My old Histriasaurus boscarollii restoration (from 2003?):

It is interesting noting that the only Croatian dinosaurs with names were never given a scientific and public attention they have deserved. There was no sculptural restoration, no postal stamp, no dedicated book. One feeble attempt to mark the presence of dinosaur fossil bones in Croatia was made by issuing a postal stamp . An iguanodontoid was featured in the image.

The recent Ulika museum is the first to give them the credit. Pity that the museum is still relatively unknown, although, it has been open for public almost a year ago.

Nodosaur and possibly Rhabdodon finds in Quarry Stranice near Slovenske Konjice (repost from BDW 2005)

   

Mesozoic Mosaic pg #5

Illustration: Sauropelta - by Beri (graphite), Copyright © 2004-2005 Berislav Krzic

 

Mesozoic Mosaic pg #5
Photograph of Struthiosaurus austriacus (Bunzel 1870) fossil on display in Natural History Museum in Vienna Site: Muthmannsdorf near Wiener Neustadt, Austria Struthiosaurus might look like a cross between Edmontonia and Sauropelta, says Kenneth Carpenter, Ph.D. Struthiosaurus References s: (update 2014) Sympatry of two ankylosaurs (Hungarosaurus and cf. Struthiosaurus) in the Santonian of Hungary
Nodosaur and possibly Rhabdodon finds in Quarry Stranice near Slovenske Konjice   In the sediments of Quarry Stranice (kamnoloma Stranice) near SlovenskeKonjice (Campanian; gosauski razvoj) in north-east Slovenia, fossils of single and colonial corals were found. In addition to the corals, bivalves, fragments of sponges, snail shells, ostracodes, briozoa, algae and foraminifera were also found. On the west side of the site, near Lipa, fragments of fish teeth, a crocodylian tooth and the long bones of dinosaurs were discovered. These fossils were first found in 1999 by Franc Pajtler, and researched by Dr. Irena Debeljak. Dr. Debeljak (ZRC SAZU) thought the bones possibly belonged to a medium-sized quadrupedal plant-eating nodosaur, which was a member of the family Ankylosauria. This is the second discovery of dinosaurs in Slovenia. The first one, near Kozina, was in an area that was separated from Quarry Stranice in the Upper Cretaceous by the sea, precluding a comparison of the fauna from the two sites. The fossils of dinosaurs, crocodylians, turtles and freshwater fish indicate a rich vertebrate fauna at that time. The nearest site to Stranice with nodosaur remains is in the vicinity of Vienna (Muthmannsdorf -Wienerneustadt, Avstria). The locality of Quarry Stranice (kamnoloma Stranice) near Slovenske Konjice thus becomes an important palaeontological find. The fossils are on display in the Natural History Museum in Ljubljana: http://www2.pms-lj.si/oddelki/paleontologija/stranice.html English translation: Berislav Krzic Edited by: Brian Franczak Note (Feb/2014): as to my knowledge, up to this day, no further research has been conducted regarding the Quarry Stranice fossil finds.   .

Nyctosaurus - a pterosaur with a large crest (BDW repost)

This is a repost from my "extinct" Geocities site.

Illustration of Nyctosaurus KJ2 flying - by Beri (digital), Copyright © 2004 BERI


Christopher Bennett from University of Bridgeport Bridgeport, CT, described a couple of exciting fossil specimens of pterosaurs: Nyctosaurus - a pterosaur with a large crest
Bennett S. C. 2003. New crested specimens of the Late Cretaceous pterosaur Nyctosaurus. - Palaeontologische Zeitschrift, 77 (1): 61-75, 6 figs., 1 tab.; Stuttgart.


Nyctosaurus turned out to have an extremely large cranial crest nearly three times the length of the skull and bifurcating into an upward extending and a shorter backward extending ramus. Whether these supported a sail-like membrane is at the moment a pure speculation. As Chris notes: "I discussed the question of a membrane between the two rami of the crest in the paper and concluded that there was no evidence of any membrane between the rami and good reason to think that there was not one. Despite that, for some reason that I cannot understand everyone else seems to think that there was a membrane between the rami." Evidence is based on 2 specimens in a private collection. No species name is applied and the specimens are refereed to as KJ1&KJ2.