On June 1, Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources announced that in March 2019, rock climbing enthusiasts discovered a bunch of "chicken paw prints" in the Sharen Air Shelter in the east of Chongqing Geleshan National Forest Park, which was later planned by Chongqing Municipality. A team of paleontologists organized by the Natural Resources Bureau initially identified it as a theropod dinosaur footprint group born in the Lower Jurassic Pearl Chong group 190 million years ago.
The research was jointly completed by Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Dai Hui, a senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Geological Relics Protection Research Institute, and Wei Guangbiao, a research librarian of Chongqing Geological Survey Institute.
Scene map and sketch map of dinosaur tracks in Geleshan National Forest Park.
The latest achievement was published in the famous British SCI journal "Historical Biology" by the scientific paper "The Early Jurassic Kayentapus dominated tracks from Chongqing, China". The study confirmed that the dinosaur footprint is Kayentapus, and can be included in it. The model species, Kayentapus hopii (Kayentapus hopii), is the best preserved Jurassic Kayan tower footprint group for Asia. "The trackmaker" is probably a Chinese dragon. What is the Kayan Tower footprint? The Kayanta footprint originally referred to the genus name of a larger (approximately 35cm long) three-toed bipedal theropod dinosaur footprint, which was first discovered in the lower pygmy in Arizona, USA Luotong Formation.
The characteristic of the Kayanta footprint is that it does not retain the hallux mark, but retains the fourth metatarsophalangeal pad mark, which is completely separated from the rest of the mark. Compared with the Shileilong footprint, the Kayanta footprint has narrower and thinner features, but the toe part is wider and has a different front triangular structure.
Researchers portrayed dinosaur footprints on the spot.
Dai Hui, a senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Geological Relics Protection Research Institute, introduced that the Kayan Tower footprints are widely distributed in North America, Northeast Europe, Africa and Asia Jurassic strata. China is mainly distributed in Yunnan Lufeng, Jinning and In the Lower Jurassic strata of Panxi area of Sichuan and Zizhou of Shaanxi. In North America, the Kayan Tower footprint "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 footprints of the Kayan Tower are widely distributed all over the world, there has never been a confirmed footprint of the Huo's Kayan Tower in Asia." Dai Hui said that the discovery of the dinosaur footprint group in Geleshan, Chongqing, confirmed the dinosaur footprint after research. It is the Kayan Tower footprint and can be classified into its model species. The Huoshan Kayan Tower footprint is the best preserved Jurassic Kayan Tower footprint group in Asia. At that time, the "trackmaker" was trotting the dinosaur footprint group, located on the surface of two quartz sandstones about 3 meters apart, with a total of 46 three-toed theropod footprints. Among them, the surface of the first layer consists of 7 tracks consisting of a total of 32 footprints, and another 12 isolated footprints; the second layer has a total of 2 isolated footprints. The average footprint of the 7 tracks on the first floor is 24.1 cm, the largest footprint is 35 cm long, and the smallest footprint 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.
Kayan Tower Trail.
It is reported that after the discovery of the dinosaur footprint group, Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Dai Hui, a senior engineer of Chongqing 208 Geological Relics Protection Research Institute, and Wei Guangbiao, a researcher of Chongqing Geological Survey Institute, participated in the completion of the research.
Dai Hui said that the discovery of the dinosaur footprint group in Geleshan, Chongqing has enriched the records of the Kayanta footprint group in China and even Asia, and further proves that the footprints of lower Jurassic dinosaurs in Asia and the world are mostly theropod dinosaur footprints. The morphological types show consistent diversity, which is of great significance for the study of the distribution and evolution of the early Jurassic dinosaur fauna in China.