A mid-Cretaceous dinosaur track assemblage from the Hengshan Formation in central Zhejiang, China

ABSTRACT

The Cretaceous Hengshan Formation at the Baxian tracksite, central Zhejiang has yielded more than 20 sauropod tracks with a considerable size range (pes length ranging from 22.7–83.7 cm). The assemblage consists of a more complete trackway of a large animal, a less complete trackway of a large animal with a similar orientation and, a small manus-pes set indicating a smaller trackmaker. Thus, it is a small ichnoassociation with tracks indicating different-sized trackmakers that moved in different directions. From a global perspective the assemblage is important, because it is another data point indicating the presence of different size-classes and mixed associations with very small and large sauropods, probably representing juvenile and adult individuals. These tracks are the first reported from the mid-Cretaceous of this region, being therefore slightly younger than those already known from Early Cretaceous sites, which are also attributed to sauropods.

KEYWORDS:

• Brontopodus
• sauropod tracks
• Duntou basin

Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and proposals for improvements. Furthermore, we are indebted to Yongqian Chen who provided local support. This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41790455, 41772008); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2652017215), the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) (No. 173127).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.