Young Dinosaur Fans show their Appreciation

With the school summer holidays, team members at Everything Dinosaur organise a series of activities to help entertain and educate children as part of the County Council leisure services summer events.  A typical visit took place yesterday at Poynton Leisure Centre, near Stockport, Cheshire.  We arrived in the afternoon and carried out a number of activities and games with the children, culminating in the creation of a poster montage which we called “Prehistoric Poynton”.  Despite the advances made in the science of palaeontology, there is very little evidence available to indicate what colour dinosaurs actually were.  Although we are all familiar with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals from films, books and of course television, the actual colouration of these animals is very much open to debate.  During one of our many dinosaur teaching lessons we carry out a little exercise where we get the young dinosaur fans to interpret dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals and advance their own theories.  There are some wonderful ideas put forward and the children help us produce a colourful poster scheme on which they can display all their drawings and information on dinosaurs.  This exercise is certainly a fun and an informative activity and helps young learners to appreciate some of the ideas that we introduce when showing various fossils.

Earlier that day, in preparation for our visit, the children had created thank you cards to give to the Everything Dinosaur team members who were involved in this particular visit.  The children, working closely with the enthusiastic Leisure Centre staff and helpers produced a wonderful collection of thank you cards and pictures.  We added the cards to the poster display that was produced in our activity session, but we did take a card home so that we could pin it up onto our own display board in the warehouse.

A Thank you Card from the Children

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture above was presented by a young girl to the Everything Dinosaur team members who took part in the activity session, we thought it a good idea to take a picture of it before we pinned it to our display board.

Amazing Cretaceous Bony Fish Preserved in Flint

For a local Kent resident the habit of picking up unusual objects to place in his rockery at home has enabled scientists to get to grips with a rare example of a fossilised Cretaceous fish.

The stone shaped fish head was spotted by Peter Parvin and his wife whilst they beach-combed on a caravan holiday to Pevensey in East Sussex in 1993.  Found amongst the pebbles as the tide was going out, Mr Parvin thought nothing of his find, simply placing it amongst the other curiosities he had collected in this rockery.  However, a chance conversation with a volunteer from Maidstone museum in a pub, led to him bringing this rare, ancient relic to the museum for closer examination.

The Rare Fish Head Fossil

Picture Credit: Kent News Online

The fish head fossil measures approximately 15 cm across, it is shown in the photograph facing to the right of the screen.  The eye, mouth and shape of the gills can clearly be seen.

“I have never seen one of these before”, commented Dr. Ed Jarzembowski, the Keeper of Natural History at Maidstone Museum.  “Quite simply it's priceless”.

In contrast with most fossils found from this period (which are associated with chalk), the fish head has been preserved in flint, this makes it particularly rare and valuable.  The hard flint would have helped maintain the quality of preservation, even as this stone was bumped and bashed on the shoreline of Pevensey beach.

The fish has been dated to around 80 million years ago (late Cretaceous) and is a representative of the modern bony fish group the Teleosts.  This type of fish, with its streamlined fins, highly manoeuvrable body and ability to open its jaws wider than other more primitive fish forms evolved from the Acanthodian fishes.  Bony fish dominate the world's freshwater and oceans with a greater diversity of animals at the taxonomic level of Family than any other group of vertebrates.

During the late Cretaceous, most of the UK was covered with a warm, shallow tropical sea.  These seas swarmed with life and there are a number of common fossils associated with flint nodules.  Sponges are often found in association with flint nodules.  Flint occurs as extremely hard nodes in chalk deposits.  It is formed by chemical reactions within the chalk sediments and it is composed of silica in the form of microscopic quartz crystals.  The silica came mainly from the exoskeletons of dead sea sponges (these are made of silica), and they were subject to dissolving into solution under the alkaline environment of the chalk deposits.  The silica tended to re-solidify if it encountered local acidic conditions such as the acidic conditions surrounding decaying organic material such as this fish head.  This may help to explain how this fish head fossil was formed.

There are plans to put the fish head on display at the local museum, although it may be ultimately sold in order to help raise funds for the museum's development.

Scientists Discover Remains of Juvenile Tarbosaurus

A joint Japanese and Mongolian expedition have successfully recovered a nearly complete skeleton of a young dinosaur, a relative of the monstrous Tyrannosaurus rex.  This rare and important find will enable palaeontologists to better understand how Theropod dinosaurs grew and developed.

The dinosaur, a Tarbosaurus (Tarbosaurus bataar) is a juvenile and the skeleton is nearly complete, all that is missing are some neck vertebrae and a few bones from the tip of the tail.  Tarbosaurus was a member of the Tyrannosauridae and this creature is the largest known predator from Asia.  Associated with the very end of the Cretaceous, just like its North American cousin T. rex (Maastrichtian faunal stage), this fierce carnivore grew up to 12 metres in length.  Although known for at least sixty years, scientists still debate whether Tarbosaurus is sufficiently different from Tyrannosaurus rex to be regarded as a distinctive genus.  The fossils found to date (there are more Tarbosaurus remains to study than its more famous relative T. rex), indicate that these two animals were very similar.  There are minor differences in skull morphology, with Tarbosaurus having a proportionately larger head but a shallower snout and less powerfully built lower jaw.  Some scientists claim that Tarbosaurus was more lightly built than Tyrannosaurus rex, perhaps the result of the slightly different ecosystem in Mongolia and China compared to late Cretaceous western North America.  A more agile, gracile predator Tarbosaurus may have specialised in tackling lighter prey animals.

The Beautifully Preserved Tarbosaurus Skull

Picture Credit: Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences (Japan)

The skull is facing to the left of the page, the typical thick, strong teeth of a Tyrannosauridae can clearly be seen.  The blue and white scale bar placed next to the skull is 10 cm long.

The joint Mongolian/Japanese expedition, made up of scientists from the Mongolian Academy of Scientists and the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences in Japan first found the fossilised remains of this dinosaur in August 2006.  The skeleton was encased in a block of sandstone and it has taken nearly two years of careful, patience preparation to extract this young dinosaur from its rock tomb.

Commenting on the completeness of the fossil, Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesperson for the Hayashibara Museum stated:

“We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts”.

Fossilised skeletons of young dinosaurs are extremely rare and the discovery of such a well-preserved and complete specimen is an exceptional find.  The bones of juveniles, being lighter than adults are often scattered and broken up or destroyed by weathering on the surface.  The corpse of a young dinosaur would have been attractive to any passing scavenger and many remains would have been devoured leaving little chance of fossilisation for the fragments that are left over.  This fossil was probably covered very soon after death and this has led to the preservation of over 95% of the bones.

The latest discovery from the Gobi desert will help provide more information on the ontogeny of dinosaurs (growth rates and development).  The animal was over 2 metres long when it died and it is believed to have been around the age of 5.  It has not been possible to determine the gender, but had this dinosaur lived to reach adult hood it would have been the top predator of the area and may have exceeded 12 metres in length.

Frog Blog – Tiny Frog Spotted near Pond

Yesterday one of our team members spotted a tiny frog whilst they were outside watering the office tomato plants (another one of our projects).  The frog was one that had just emerged this year and it was discovered within 5 feet of the office pond.  Although we cannot prove it conclusively, we can surmise that this frog hatched in the pond and had been one of the tadpoles we had been attempting to observe.

Once the tadpoles hatched, within days they disappeared and we thought that they had all perished.  From late April until early July not one single tadpole was seen by any of our staff members.  We were quite surprised, as although the pond was relatively small and shallow we just could not find any amongst the weed.

The Baby Frog

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

However, the finding of a frog that had recently undergone metamorphosis so close to the office pond, with no other water source nearby may indicate that at least one of the tadpoles has made it to the frog stage.  We will keep a close look out in case we spot anymore.

New Study Indicates Dinosaur Divergence well before Late Cretaceous Demise

There is a popularist view that the dinosaurs were at their most diverse and at the peak of their evolution in terms of the number of new species evolving; at the very end of the Cretaceous.  The Chicxulub impact then wiped out the great dinosaur dynasty leaving the world for the mammals to exploit.  Fossil evidence does not support this idea, studies in the Hell Creek Formation (Maastrichtian faunal stage), of the western United States indicate that the number of species of dinosaur was declining in this part of the world towards the end of the Cretaceous.  Approximately ten different genera are known from the youngest Cretaceous sediments, whilst older strata from this area show evidence of many more different dinosaur types.

Certainly some of the best known dinosaurs date from the very end of the Mesozoic.  Animals wandering the Hell Creek area at the end of the Cretaceous include Triceratops, Ankylosaurus and of course Tyrannosaurus rex.  In the past, these gigantic representatives of their dinosaur families, (Triceratops, Ankylosaurus and T. rex are just about the largest type of dinosaur from these three families), were thought to indicate that dinosaurs just got too big and lumbering to survive and this is why they went extinct.  Scientists now know that the reasons for the end Cretaceous mass extinction event, the extinction not only of the dinosaurs but also the Ammonites, Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs, Pterosaurs and a whole host of other plants and animals, were complex and probably involved a number of factors.

Given the limitations of the existing dinosaur fossil record it is difficult to piece together a “dinosaur family tree” but a project to map dinosaur evolution and to highlight the main evolutionary shifts in Dinosauria has just been completed.  The results of this study, led by a team of researchers from the University of Bristol has just been published in the British Journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

This study indicates that the dinosaurs as a group diversified rapidly in the Late Triassic (225 – 200 million years ago) and then underwent a second evolutionary surge in the Mid Jurassic (170 -160 million years ago).  The scientists studied a large portion of the described dinosaur species and pieced together an evolutionary “family tree of dinosaurs”.  The team estimate that their study covered something like 70 percent of all the known and described dinosaur species.

This new study contradicts earlier research that shows the dinosaurs diversifying during the Cretaceous.  The established view is that although dinosaurs as a group diversified during their entire existence, in certain periods, the evolution of new forms was speeded up.  One such period was the early to mid Cretaceous which saw the emergence of a greater variety of Ornithischian dinosaurs – the rise of the Hadrosaurs, Ceratopsians and the Pachycephalosaurs, for example.  These types of new dinosaur were evolving during a time when many life forms on Earth were diversifying.  Dating from about 125 to 80 million years ago, there seems to have been a huge surge of increased terrestrial biodiversity.  This time period is referred to as the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, life on Earth over this period changed dramatically.  The Angiosperms (flowering plants), social insects, modern lizards, Mosasaurs and many types of mammals all evolved.  It had been thought that the rapidly diversifying dinosaurs were part of this move towards greater biodiversity, the paper published by the Bristol team demotes dinosaur evolution during this period to a more peripheral role.  This new study indicates that by the time of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, all the main dinosaur types that were to survive until the end of the Cretaceous were already established.

This new work certainly contrasts with much of the accepted thinking regarding dinosaur diversity.  Most palaeontologists believe that during the early to middle Jurassic there were only four main groups of dinosaurs, whilst during the Cretaceous this expanded to nine, namely:

Megalosaurs/Allosaurs, Tyrannosaurs, Sauropods, Hysilophodontids, Hadrosaurs, Pachycephalosaurs, Ceratopsians, Ankylosaurs and Stegosaurs.

The fossil record for all the terrestrial vertebrate life of the Mesozoic is very incomplete so it is difficult to trace evolutionary links between different types of animals.  The work of the Bristol University team is certainly helping to open up the debate, but not having reviewed the actual paper we cannot really comment any further.  It would be interesting to find out how the evolution of non-avian dinosaurs, the birds has been assessed in this study.  Very little is known about the evolution of birds, but they do seem to have diversified and developed new species very quickly during the mid to late Cretaceous, a growth in speciation that was largely unchecked by the Cretaceous mass extinction event.

Certainly, it is not surprising that the dinosaurs diversified during the late Triassic, the world was just recovering from the Permian mass extinction (an event that saw an estimated 57% of all marine families and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate genera becoming extinct).  Life on Earth slowly began to recover and those types of organisms left began to diversify to fill those environmental niches that were empty and those soon to be left empty by the “dead clades walking” such as the last of the Lystrosaurs.

Big Meat-eaters Roamed Cretaceous Japan

Teeth are the hardest parts of vertebrates bodies, the enamel is readily fossilised if conditions are favourable and fossil teeth can provide palaeontologists with a great deal of information about extinct animals.  More information regarding prehistoric life in what is now Japan was unveiled this week with the announcement of the discovery of the largest dinosaur tooth known to date from this country.

An amateur palaeontologist called Satoshi Utsunomiya had found the single tooth whilst on a fossil hunting trip in Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture.

The Dinosaur Tooth

Picture Credit: yomiuri.co.jp

The tooth is clearly from a meat-eating dinosaur, a Theropod and was found in sediments approximately 130 million years old, dating the discovery to the early Cretaceous (Hauterivian/Barremian faunal stages).  The tooth is extremely well preserved and measures 8.2 cm long and is 2.8 cm wide at its widest part.

The tooth is a broken tooth, that means that the root is missing.  Two basic types of fossil teeth are found, those with the roots and those without.  The teeth with roots probably fell out of the animal’s skull with the animal already long dead, the flesh around the gums rotting away and eventually the teeth including their roots fall out.  Teeth like these are often found in association with other bone and teeth material.  In contrast, broken teeth like the one found in Japan are associated with tooth loss whilst the animal was very much alive.  A tooth may have been shed whilst this carnivore was feeding or fighting.  Dinosaurs were capable of replacing their teeth throughout their lives, as teeth were worn, broken or shed new teeth erupted on the inside of the old ones.

According to the National Museum of Nature and Science, the largest tooth found previously in Japan is the 7.5 cm long Mifuneryu, which was unearthed in Mifunemachi, Kumamoto Prefecture, in 1979.

One expert says the Hakusan tooth is “the largest specimen found in perfect condition in this country.”   The specimen has been authenticated by the Palaeontological Society of Japan.

The tooth is certainly typical of a large Theropod, being generally re-curved with blade-like denticles (serrations) along the front and back edges.  Teeth variations can help scientists identity the family of the dinosaur that the tooth may have come from.  For instance, Allosauridae and Carcharodontosauridae family members tend to have large, slightly compressed teeth with even-sized serrations.  Tyrannosaur teeth tend to be thicker, “D” shaped in cross section and more coarsely serrated.  The serrated edges helped these meat-eaters to cut into the meat of the victims very efficiently as well as helping to maintain a grip on any struggling prey.

Team members at Everything Dinosaur have been lucky enough to examine a number of large Theropod teeth including Tyrannosaur teeth found in Canada.  One particular specimen was so well preserved that the coarse serrations along the edges could clearly be seen without any preparation.

Although, rare in the fossil record casts of fossil teeth can be purchased so that enthusiasts can own for themselves a piece of dinosaur dentition, for example, Everything Dinosaur offers for sale a replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth, one of the very first ever identified as belonging to a T. rex.  It is a copy of a tooth from the right, lower jaw.

The Tyrannosaurus rex Tooth from Everything Dinosaur

Tyrannosaurus rex tooth

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view the tooth: Dinosaur Crafts for Kids

There have been a number of recent dinosaur discoveries in Japan, including the unearthing of an enormous thigh bone of a large plant-eating dinosaur: Huge Sauropod Femur found in Japan

In addition, remains of late Cretaceous dinosaurs have also been discovered, including evidence of duck-billed dinosaurs (Hadrosaurs): Duck-Billed dinosaur discovered in Japan

Review of Summer Edition of Prehistoric Times (Edition 86)

Another fact filled edition of Prehistoric Times is just out, this is the Summer edition of the quarterly magazine for Dinosaur enthusiasts and model collectors.  As always the standard of editing and article writing is high with lots of information about new models and the latest developments in palaeontology crammed into the magazine’s 60 colour pages.

The front cover features a Carcharodontosaurus “shark-toothed lizard”, an Allosaurid Theropod from mid-Cretaceous North Africa.  A representative of a family of dinosaurs that may well turn out to be the largest meat-eating dinosaurs of all.

The Front Cover of Prehistoric Times (ed. 86)

Issue 86

Picture Credit: Mike Fredericks

There is an extensive article that brings together the latest research on these particular carnivores, informing the reader about the first discoveries of Carcharodontosaurids as well us providing updates on the latest interpretations of recently found meat-eaters which may also be classified a members of this dinosaur family.

In addition, there is a super and very practical article written by William Stout on how to become a paleoartist plus amongst all the other product reviews and news stories there is the first part of a feature by Tracy Ford on swimming dinosaurs.

Pleasing to see those early pioneers of the Sabre-Tooth look the Gorgonopsids are included in this edition.  There are lots of drawings of this fierce animal which have been sent in by readers and the article provides readers with further details on some of the 40 different species of family Gorgonopsidae.  Gorgonopsids had their profile raised when one of their kind, Gorgonops was featured in the BBC TV series “Walking with Monsters” and the first series of ITV’s action adventure series “Primeval”.

To subscribe to Prehistoric Times: Prehistoric Times Magazine

Happy Birthday Sir Richard Owen

Sir Richard Owen, English anatomist and palaeontologist was born this day in 1804.  Born in Lancaster, in the northwest of England, he rose from relatively humble origins as a university educated surgeon's apprentice to become one of the most prominent and eminent scientists of the 19th Century.

He pioneered the science of vertebrate palaeontology conducting extensive research into extinct mammals, reptiles and birds.  Perhaps he is best remembered for two particular contributions to the world of science.  He coined the phrase “Dinosauria” meaning “Terrible Lizards” or “Fearfully Great Lizards”, hence the term Dinosaur was created.

Sir Richard Owen

Picture Credit: The Natural History Museum

Note

The bones in the picture are the giant leg bones of the huge flightless bird the New Zealand Moa.

A manipulative and skillful person, Owen was keen to promote himself and his achievements, often to the detriment of his scientific rivals.  The naming of Dinosaurs as a separate and distinct order of reptiles illustrates his scheming.  It has been claimed that when the paper describing the similarities of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon and identifying them as a distinct order of reptiles – the Dinosaurs was published, many were wrongly dated as August 1841 and not April 1842 (the actual date of publication).   As a result Sir Richard Owen was able to claim that he had come to these conclusions much earlier than any of his peers.

Courted by aristocracy and royalty Sir Richard Owen (he was knighted in 1884), rose to the highest echelons in Victorian society and he is regarded as a brilliant anatomist and scientist with perhaps his most important work being the four volume “History of British Fossil Reptiles” first published in 1849.  His second major contribution to popular science was his determination to unite all the various fossil and anatomical collections under one roof.  He was the driving force behind the creation of the British Museum of Natural History (now the Natural History Museum), in South Kensington, London.  This museum opened up science to the public and gave ordinary people access to knowledge, indeed the museum has often been cited as model for the later museums that were to follow in other major cities in the world.  There is some irony to this as Owen based much of his plans for the London museum on the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

Although often criticised for his willingness to discredit fellow scientists and there is some evidence to suggest that he wrongly claimed scientific discoveries as his own, Sir Richard was instrumental in developing the science we know today as palaeontology.

Technically, Sir Richard Owen was not the first person to classify dinosaurs as a separate group from the extant reptile orders, The German palaeontologist Hermann von Meyer viewed the dinosaurs as a separate group as early as 1832.  He classified dinosaurs as “Saurians”.  During the early 1830s only a few dinosaurs had been named and described, Owen was able to identify a number of anatomical characteristics that showed that genera such as Megalosaurus and Iguanodon were related.  Although only a few bones and teeth of Megalosaurus had been found, it had been classified as a meat-eating quadruped.  More remains of Iguanodon had been discovered and this animal had been classified as a four-footed herbivore.  The breakthrough came for Owen when he was able to study  a newly discovered Iguanodon sacrum and compare it to a Megalosaurus sacrum that was in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.  The five sacral vertebrae forming the lower part of the spine of these animals were fused in exactly the same way.  It was Owen who grasped the significance of the adaptation, as it would have enabled these animals to carry their huge bulk on land.  This and other anatomical features led Owen to conclude that these animals deserved a distinct classification from other reptiles and this led him to develop the Dinosauria classification.

Protoceratops – A Favourite Dinosaur amongst Palaeontologists

A few years ago whilst relaxing after a hard day’s work on a fossil site in Alberta, Canada, the topic of conversation moved away from the merits of the Hadrosaur log jam that we had been mapping to a discussion of what were the most important vertebrate fossil finds of all time.

Each team member was given the opportunity to choose a particular specimen and then to put forward a coherent argument as to why their choice should be awarded the accolade of being designated an important vertebrate fossil.  A number of candidates were put forward, fossils such as both the London and Berlin Archaeopteryx fossils, for example.  Another contender was the Ichthyostega fossils (evidence of a late Devonian tetrapod) described by the Swedish palaeontologist Gunnar Säve-Söderberg.

After much discussion and lively debate, eventually a consensus amongst us was reached.  It was decided that although the nominations were all valid candidates for the accolade as important vertebrate fossils; one particular suggestion stood out when compared to the others.  One of our group had not put forward a single fossil specimen as their nomination but instead had suggested an entire genus, or at least one dinosaur species as a representative of that genus.  The genus suggested was Protoceratops and the particular species was Protoceratops andrewsi.   They argued that Protoceratops, as one of the best known of all dinosaurs, deserved to be considered as an important part of the vertebrate fossil record.

Many hundreds of fossil skeletons of Protoceratops have been found, in China and Mongolia, so many specimens that palaeontologists have nick-named this little dinosaur as “the sheep of the Cretaceous”.  The first fossils of this member of the horned dinosaur family were found in 1922, on one of the many American Museum of Natural History backed expeditions to Mongolia, led by the famous American adventurer Roy Chapman Andrews.

It was Protoceratops that finally provided definitive proof that dinosaurs laid eggs, with the discover of Protoceratops nests.  A number of nests were discovered at the bottom of a cliff and this provided evidence that these dinosaurs may have nested in colonies.

An Illustration of Protoceratops

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Protoceratops was a herbivore, living in the late Cretaceous of China and Mongolia.  The large number of vertebrate fossils found have enabled scientists to build up a detailed knowledge of the ecosystem, an ecosystem dominated by dinosaurs but one that shows the rise and diversity of mammals as well.  The herds of Protoceratops shared their world with the Ornithomimid Gallimimus, as well as Maniraptorans such as Velociraptor and Oviraptor.  The top predator was the Tyrannosaur – Tarbosaurus baatar.  Living in the shadow of the dinosaurs were many types of early mammal, not only placental mammals such as Kennalestes but the ancient mammal group of the multituberculates were also represented.  The habitat seems to have been quite dry and arid, but the fauna and flora of the area was diverse.  However, in some sediments 75% of all the vertebrate fossils found are fossils of Protoceratops, such is the abundance of the particular dinosaur’s remains.

As well as providing evidence of nesting, a Protoceratops has been preserved in a battle with a Velociraptor, the only example of dinosaurs fighting in the fossil record to date.  This fossil, comprising a tangle of bones showing the two animals in their duel to the death was unearthed in Mongolia in 1971.  Perhaps more importantly from a palaeontological perspective is that scientists have fossils of this dinosaur from embryos to mature fully grown adults so they have been able to obtain some understanding of how these animals grew and developed.  Not only has an appreciation of the ontogeny of Protoceratops been possible but the different sizes and shapes of the head crest has also helped provide information on sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs.

After considering all these factors, our group decided that the humble “sheep of the Cretaceous”  should be considered in the same august company as the other more spectacular finds such as the Solnhofen Archaeopteryx fossils.

Unfortunately, there are not many models of Protoceratops around at the moment, although the American Museum of Natural History included a model of a Protoceratops within their Feathered Dinosaur range, presumably as Protoceratops would have known feathered dinosaurs as many feathered Dromaeosaurs shared its world.  Also the set of models in this series includes a Psittacosaurus, a dinosaur often associated with Protoceratops.  Indeed, many dinosaur books illustrate Psittacosaurus and Protoceratops together however, although they are both associated with the evolution of the later Ceratopsians such as Styracosaurus and Chasmosaurus, Psittacosaurs lived millions of years before Protoceratops.

The Protoceratops Model alongside a Psittacosaurus

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view the Feathered Dinosaur tube: Dinosaur Toys for Boys and Girls – Dinosaur Models

Laser Beams help Scientists Interpret Dinosaur Footprints

Trackways left by dinosaurs as they wandered across soft mud millions of years ago can provide palaeontologists with information on long extinct animal's behaviour.  Trackways are trace fossils, these preserve evidence of the activity of animals.  Such sets of footprints can help scientists calculate the travelling speed, stride length and other characteristics of the animals that left them.  If there are a group of footprints fossilised, they can provide clues to dinosaur herding behaviour.  Trackway evidence suggests that Sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs), moved about in closely knit and tightly grouped herds, with mature animals on the outside and younger, smaller animals on the inside.  Large footprints on the perimeter of the group and smaller footprints towards the middle provide the scientific evidence to show that Sauropods moved around like this to give some protection to the younger animals within the herd.

Signs of heavily churned up sediments which contain Mesozoic fossils could have been caused by the trampling of large numbers of dinosaurs, for example, at what was a waterhole, or lake shore.  This phenomenon is known as “dinoturbation”.

However, problems arise when geological processes lead to the movement of the strata so that they are no longer presented in a horizontal plane.  There are a number of examples of this within the known fossil record, some of them are classified by Ichnologists (scientists that study footprints), as “megatracks”.  A megatrack site is an area where dinosaurs have left footprints that have become fossilised across huge areas of land.  Some palaeontologists believe that these sites represent migration routes, prehistoric trackways that may have been used by groups of dinosaurs following the rains, searching for fresh feeding or heading for breeding grounds.  Some of these routes may have been created over hundreds of migrations.

One such dinosaur trackway site is at Fumanya in the south-east Pyrenees in Spain.  Here the Cretaceous sediments have been raised up to a slant of 60 degrees and the trackways cover a distance of nearly 2,000 metres.  The footprints have preserved the passage of a group of enormous Titanosaurs as they crossed a muddy plain, (long-necked dinosaurs, the last type of Sauropod to evolve).

Unfortunately, the footprint layer is very soft and crumbling and any attempt to climb the rock face to get a close look at the tracks could result in irreversible damage.  To examine the tracks at a safe distance would have proved problematical but thanks to the ingenuity of the University of Manchester team given the job of analysing the prints, this difficulty has been overcome.  The Manchester team scanned the rock surface and the prints using LiDAR, a laser mapping system that produces detailed 3-D images.  The LiDAR system (termed LiDAR – Light Detection and Range), provided an accurate 3-D contour map of the site.  This digital process represents a huge leap forward (no pun intended for the Ichnologists), compared to more traditional methods of study involving close physical examination and plaster cast copies.

The higher resolution and the accuracy of the images will help palaeontologists to better understand how these huge animals walked, which part of the foot was lifted from the ground first as a step was made and the role of the claws in helping to provide support and grip as these dinosaurs moved.  The use of LiDAR in this way is an interesting application of the technology.  It is used in geology and archaeological excavations as well as for traffic enforcement, where this system is used by a number of police forces to detect speeding motorists.  LiDAR is able to detect and calculate the speed of a single car within a group of moving vehicles and in certain situations, it is the system of choice when compared to the more traditional RADAR gun.