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).

The new dinosaur comic

There is a new episode of my Dinosaur comic in my other blog.

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).

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.

Tracks, tracks...everywhere (2)

I've been to Pula over the Easter holidays, but didn't have time to visit the Kamenjak sites. However,
I tried to analyse the old photographs once again. Here is the result (below). I am positive now that the mid footprint was no ornithopod but a fairly large theropod with very long middle  toe (#3). A smaller theropod (green outline) was crossing diagonally the path of the large one (or vice versa).

In Pula, the first tourists are sunbathing and even swimming in still rather cool sea.