fossile

Fossil of Thaisaurus - Took the picture at Museo di Storia Naturale, Milano

Fossil of Thaisaurus - Took the picture at Museo di Storia Naturale, Milano

Holotype fossil specimen SMNS 12591 of Procompsognathus

Holotype fossil specimen SMNS 12591 of Procompsognathus

Artistic reconstruction of the head of an early ceratopsian Xuanhuaceratops niei based on the currently known fossil material and the cranial remains of other chaoyangsaurids.

Artistic reconstruction of the head of an early ceratopsian Xuanhuaceratops niei based on the currently known fossil material and the cranial remains of other chaoyangsaurids.

1865.. WHITAKEE BXrCKlNGHAM CHALK, 399 I cannot give the thickness with accuraC3\ I will now give a short account of each, beginning with the lowest. (g). Chalk-marl. — A rather brownish-white, slightly sandy, clayey chalk, fissile, with stony layers here and there, and often with fossils (notably fish-scales). This is per- haps 80 feet thick, and mostly causes a rise of the ground above the sloping plain of the Upper Green- sand. (/). Totfernlioe Stone.- At the top of the Chalk- marl in this district there are generally two layers of rathersandy limestone, separated by a little marl, and which are more dis- tinct further north-east- ward (in Bedfordshire), where they are each about 3 feet thick. One bed is always here present, but I did not always see the two. This stone mostly yields fossils, amongst which Ammonites vai'ians and an Inoceramus are abundant, and small, hard,dark-brown nodules, most likely coprolitic : it is harder and darker than common chalk, and con- tains many small dark grains ; and was once largely quarried, for build- ing, at Totternhoe, where there are plentiful traces of the workings. Most of the old churches of the neighbourhood were built in great part of this pe- rishable stone, but I be- lieve that its use has been long discontinued. Details of the occur- rence of this bed will be given in the ' Gcolo- 2 E 2

Locality map for Australian eurypodan thyreophoran fossils. 1, Stegosaurian? footprint (QM F5701), Walloon Coal Measures, Balgowan Colliery, Balgowan (Bajocian–Bathonian); 2, Minmi paravertebra holotype (QM F10329) (Molnar, 1980), Minmi Member, Bungil Formation (Valanginian–Barremian); 3, Thyreophoran trackways, Broome Sandstone, Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia (Valanginian–Barremian); 4, Ankylosauria indet. (see Barrett et al., 2010) ‘Flat Rocks’ Wonthaggi Formation (upper Hauterivian–Albian); 5, NMV P216739, ‘Lake Copco–Dinosaur Cove’ Eumeralla Formation (middle upper Aptian to lower middle Albian) (Barrett et al., 2010); 6, QM F33286; 7, AM F119849 and AM F35259; 8, Kunbarrasaurus ieversi gen. et sp. nov. (formerly Minmi sp.) (QM F18101); 9, QM F33565 and QM F33566; 10, QM F44324-28. Legend: Dark Green, Toolebuc Formation (late middle–early late Albian); Green, Allaru Formation (upper Albian–(?)lower Cenomanian); Light green, Mackunda Formation (upper Albian–lower Cenomanian); Lightest green, Winton Formation (late Albian–early Turonian).

Original figure caption: .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}The Middletown Slab covered with the Footprints of Carnivorous Dinosaurs. The tracks are in high relief. Additional notes: Most if not all of these tridactylous (i.e. three-toed) footprints/tracks (but not the actual trackmaker!) are referred to as Grallator or as Grallator-type trace fossils. “High relief” means that these are actually casts of footprints forming a positive relief on the lower surface of the sandstone slab (so-called positive hyporelief). The material that originally formed the mud over which the dinosaurs walked was too friable to be recovered from the quarry in one piece. The slab consists of so called ‘brownstone’ which is the trading name of the sandstone quarried at Middletown, Connecticut. This sandstone belongs to the Lower Jurassic Portland Formation of the Hartford Basin (“Connecticut Valley”) and thus to the upper part of the Newark Supergroup. The trackmakers probably were relatively small ‘primitive’ theropod dinosaurs (coelophysoids) such as Podokesaurus the remains of which were recovered from Lower Jurassic deposits of the Hartford Basin.

Locality map: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. Map showing the Nipple Butte area (indicated by yellow star) of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM). GSENM is bounded by the red rectangle and silhouetted in dark gray on the inset of Utah and surrounding states (modified from [1]). The original map has been modified to show the Nipple Butte area instead of the Machairoceratops fossil locality as in the original source. New location based on map in A New Macrovertebrate Assemblage from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of Southern Utah, page 601.

(A) Map of Queensland showing the extent of Cretaceous outcrop. (B) Map of the location of Dig Site Three (type locality of Haliskia), and numerous other sites in the area from which pterosaur fossils have been collected.

Eubrontes dinosaur track from the Jurassic of Connecticut, USA. Trace fossils are any indirect evidence of ancient life. They refer to features in rocks that do not represent parts of the body of a once-living organism. Traces include footprints, tracks, trails, burrows, borings, and bitemarks. Body fossils provide information about the morphology of ancient organisms, while trace fossils provide information about the behavior of ancient life forms. Interpreting trace fossils and determination of the identity of a trace maker can be straightforward (for example, a dinosaur footprint represents walking behavior) or not. Sediments that have trace fossils are said to be bioturbated. Burrowed textures in sedimentary rocks are referred to as bioturbation. Trace fossils have scientific names assigned to them, in the same style & manner as living organisms or body fossils. This track was made by a theropod, a group of small to large, carnivorous, bipedal dinosaurs. The specimen comes from a Triassic to Jurassic terrestrial sedimentary succession that filled up a half graben, many of which occur along America's eastern seaboard. Such half-graben basins formed during the Triassic as the Pangaea supercontinent tried to rift apart, but failed. Pangaea successfully broke apart during the Jurassic. Stratigraphy: East Berlin Formation, Newark Supergroup, Lower Jurassic Locality: unrecorded / undisclosed site at or near the town of Rocky Hill, central Connecticut, USA Info. at: mrdata.usgs.gov/geology/state/sgmc-unit.php?unit=CTJeb%3B0 and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubrontes

A trackway of the trace fossil Bifurculapes laqueatus (positive hyporelief, i.e. casts on the bottom surface of the bed) from the Early Jurassic East Berlin Formation (Hartford Basin) of Holyoke, Massachusetts (not the same specimen as this one). Scale is in cm.

Fossil eggs of the oospecies Macroelongatoolithus carlylei (believed to be the eggs of giant oviraptorosaurs) from the Cedar Mountain Formation of North America. At the SECU Dinolab of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Paleogeography and paleoclimate of the Late Jurassic - 150 Ma with dinosaur fossil localities: A = Tendaguru Formation, Tanzania C1 = Shishugou & Kalazha Formations, China C2 = Shangshaximiao (Upper Shaximiao) Formation, China E1 = Sables de Glos, Argiles d’Octeville, Marnes de Bléville, Kimmeridge Clay, Calcareous Grit, Corallian Oolite, Oxford Clay, Portland Stone, England & France E2 = Villar del Arzobispo, Alcobaça, Guimarota, Sobral, Amoreira-Porto Novo, Bombarral, Freixial, Lourinhã Formations, Spain & Portugal M1-6 = Morrison Formation, United States S1 = Toquí & Cañadón Calcáreo Formations, Chile & Argentina

Fossil hunting at Dinosaur Park