In March 2019, a group of "chicken paw prints" were discovered by rock climbing enthusiasts in the Sharen Air Shelter in the eastern part of Chongqing Geleshan National Forest Park, which was initially identified by the paleontology expert team organized by the Chongqing Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau as born in Nine hundred million years ago, the Lower Jurassic Pearl Chong group theropod dinosaur footprint group.
The study was jointly completed by Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Dai Hui, a senior senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Geological Relics Protection Institute, and Wei Guangbiao, a research librarian of Chongqing Geological Survey Institute. The latest achievement was published in the famous British SCI journal "Historical Biology" with the scientific paper "The Early Jurassic Kayentapus dominated tracks from Chongqing, China". The study confirmed that the dinosaur footprint is the Kayentapus footprint. It can be classified into its model species, Kayentapus hopii, which is the best preserved Jurassic Kayan tower footprint group in Asia.
The footprint group is located on the surface of two quartz sandstones about 3 meters apart, with a total of 46 three-toed theropod footprints. Among them, the first layer surface contains 7 tracks (GLS-T1–T7) consisting of 32 footprints, and 12 isolated footprints; the second layer has 2 isolated footprints. The average footprint of the 7 tracks on the first floor is 24.1 cm, the largest footprint (GLS-T1–R1) is 35 cm long, and the smallest footprint (GLS-T3–L5) is 16 cm long. According to the relative stride length of the measured footprint, it is speculated that it was made by large and medium-sized theropod dinosaurs, and the "track maker" was doing a trot gait at the time.
According to China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Kayentapus initially refers to the genus name of a larger (about 35cm long) three-toed bipedal theropod dinosaur footprint. Dinosaur-like dinosaurs were first discovered in the Lower Jurassic strata in Arizona, USA. The Kayentapus footprint is characterized by not keeping the mark of the big toe, but keeping the mark of the metatarsophalangeal pad of the fourth finger, which is completely separated from the rest of the mark. Compared to the Ebrontes, the Caryan Tower footprint is narrower and thinner, but the toe part is wider and has a different front triangular structure. The Caryan Tower footprints are widely distributed in Jurassic strata in North America, Northeast Europe, Africa and Asia. China is mainly distributed in the Lower Jurassic strata in Lufeng, Jinning, Panxi, Sichuan, and Zizhou, Shaanxi. . In North America, the Kayan Tower trail "tracker" is the theropod dilophosaurus or the backbone of the dragon, living in the early Jurassic in the world, is one of the earliest large carnivorous dinosaurs. In China, especially in the southwestern region, the Kayan Tower footprint "trackmaker" is likely to be a Chinese dragon. The Chinese dragon has two crowns on its head. The body is about 5.6 meters long and weighs half a ton. It is a ferocious large carnivorous dinosaur.
Although the Kayan Tower footprint is widely distributed all over the world, there is no conclusive Kayentapus hopii footprint in Asia. This discovery enriches the records of the Kayanta footprint group in China and even Asia, and further proves that the lower Jurassic dinosaur footprints in Asia and even the world are mostly theropod dinosaur footprints, and the types of footprint patterns show a consistent diversity. It is of great significance to study the distribution and evolution of the early Jurassic dinosaur fauna in China.
Surging News Reporter Lu Xinwen