New Late Cretaceous (Coniacian) sauropod tracks from Hvar Island, Croatia

Abstract

In June 2017 a new sauropod trackway locality was discovered in the central part of the Adriatic–Dinaric Carbonate Platform (ADCP), on the island of Hvar (Croatia). The track site is situated on the northern shore of the western edge (Pelegrin) of the island in the upper Turonian – lower Coniacian limestone series. The track site contains altogether 13 footprints arranged in four possible trackways. The largest footprints have a diameter up to 80 cm. In some places the limestone surface is strongly karstified and the tracks are partly eroded, which has certainly modified the original shape and size of the footprints. Microfossil assemblage from the track-bearing beds suggest an early Coniacian age for the tracks. The new trackways on Hvar Island further strengthen the earlier hypothesis that sauropods were present in the western Tethyan archipelago during the late Cenomanian–late Campanian period. In addition, the new tracks, together with those from the Žukova Cove of Hvar, represent two, possibly slightly different stratigraphic horizons close to the Turonian–Coniacian boundary, and suggest that the occurrence of sauropods on the ADCP and possibly also on other parts of the Apulian microplate was not accidental, but rather periodical and more frequent than previously thought.

Dinoturbation in Upper Jurassic siliciclastic levels at Cabo Mondego (Lusitanian Basin, Portugal): evidences in a fluvial-dominated deltaic succession

“…There are a great number of Middle and Late Jurassic footprints from the surrounding margins of Tethys Ocean. Theropod and sauropod footprints are found in carbonate successions of tidal-flat deposits of carbonate platforms, such as those from Great Britain (e.g., Romano and Whyte, 2003;Powell, 2010), France (e.g., Mazin et al, 2017), Germany (e.g., Diedrich, 2011), Poland (e.g., Gierlinski et al, 2009, Italy (e.g., Avanzini et al, 1997), Switzerland (e.g., Marty et al, 2007Marty et al, , 2018Marty, 2008;Razzolini et al, 2017;Castanera et al, 2018), Croatia (e.g., Solt et al, 2020), Moroccan High-Atlas (e.g., Belvedere, 2008;Belvedere et al, 2010), Spain (e.g., García-Ramos et al, 2006;Canudo et al, 2009;Piñuela Suárez, 2015;Campos-Soto et al, 2017;Rauhut et al, 2018) and in many localities of Portugal (e.g., Lapparent et al, 1951;Lapparent and Zbyszewski, 1957;Lockley et al, 1994Lockley et al, , 1996Lockley et al, , 2000aLockley et al, , 2000bHenriques et al, 1998;Milàn, 2008, 2010;Santos et al, 2009;Rocha et al, 2014;Henriques and Pena dos Reis, 2015;Razzolini et al, 2016;Santos, 2016).…”