First record of dinosaur trackways in Beijing, China

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Xing, L.-D.
  • Zhang, J.-P.
  • Currie, P. J.
  • Gierlinski, G. D.
  • Wu, F.-D.
  • Tian, M.-Z.

• We describe a number of newly discovered dinosaur tracks from the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Tuchengzi Formation, located in the core zone of Yanqing Silicified Wood National Geopark, during field work for the preparation of global geopark application in Yanqing County, Beijing. The preliminary research indicates that these may comprise thyreophoran (cf. Deltapodus isp.), theropod, ornithopod and probably sauropod tracks. The thyreophoran tracks indicate the presence of this family during the Late Jurassic in the Jibei-Liaoxi area. This may be related to the presence of ankylosaurids from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation, in Chaoyang, Liaoning. As they are rare, high-speed theropod tracks reveal aspects of their paleoethology. The dinosaur tracks from Yanqing constitute the first evidence of dinosaurs in Beijing. These also enrich the knowledge on the diversity of dinosaur species in the Tuchengzi Formation, which provides an excellent evolutionary sample to compare with that of the later Jehol Fauna.

• Date created

  2012

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Theropod tracks
  • Ornithopod tracks
  • Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous
  • Beijing
  • Tuchengzi Formation
  • Thyreophoran tracks

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3GR0S

• License

  © 2012 SpringerOpen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.