Late Albian Dinosaur Tracks from the Cratonic (Eastern) Margin of the Western Interior Seaway, Nebraska, USA

Abstract

At least 22 tridactyl dinosaur tracks, poorly preserved in various degrees of expression, have recently been found at an exposure in the Dakota Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Albian) in Jefferson County, Nebraska. These tracks generally have broad, blunt digits and a broad posterior margin. The largest of the tracks measures 57 cm in length and 58 cm in width. All of the tracks lie within a stratigraphic horizon of 40 cm or less, but they do not form a single trackway. We interpret the trackmakers to have been ornithopods.

The Jefferson County tracks are in a well-cemented sandstone with oscillation ripples, at a stratigraphic level between two well-established sequence boundaries. Channel forms and lateral accretion units are common in the stratigraphic interval enclosing the tracks, and the site is interpreted as a bar or sand flat in a tidally influenced river.

The Jefferson County tracks are only the second known occurrence of large Mesozoic tetrapod tracks east of the Rocky Mountain Front-High Plains Margin, including the Black Hills of South Dakota, west of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and north of the Gulf Coastal Plain. Further, this paper is the first documentation of in situdinosaur fossils from the Nebraska-Iowa area.

Keywords:

• Tracksite
• dinosaur
• Albian
• Dakota Formation
• Nebraska

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the owners of the tracksite property, who wish to remain anonymous, for their complete cooperation and support in this study, Dee Ebbeka for her patient preparation of figures, and Alexandra Joeckel for assistance in the field. Erik Kvale, Steve Hasiotis, and George Pemberton provided particularly constructive reviews.

This manuscript is a contribution of the University of Nebraska Agricultural Research Division, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68583 U.S.A. Journal Series No. 14314.