Carnivorous dinosaur footprints discovered in Sichuan

New discoveries in Sichuan: Beautifully preserved dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous period

The Cretaceous [è] Period: It is the last period of the Mesozoic Era in geological time, starting 145 million years ago and ending in 66 million years ago, 79 million years later. It is the longest stage of the Phanerozoic Eon.

Origin of the name: The Cretaceous was proposed by the Belgian geologist Jeand'Omaliusd'Halloy in 1822 when he was studying the Paris Basin. Chalk, which means "gray clay" in Latin, refers to the chalk that can be seen everywhere in the Cretaceous strata. It is deposited from the calcium carbonate in the carapace of marine invertebrates, especially coccolith grains. These layers of chalky clay are found in mainland Europe and the British Isles.

The Cretaceous Period is between the Jurassic Period and the Paleogene Period, from 145 million years ago to 65 million years ago BC. The mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous was the boundary between the Mesozoic Era and the Cenozoic Era.

Characteristics of the era: During the Cretaceous period, the continents were separated by oceans, and the earth became warm and dry. During the period when the largest dinosaurs appeared, many new dinosaur species began to appear. Dinosaurs still ruled the land, pterosaurs glided in the sky, and giant marine reptiles ruled the shallow seas. The first snakes, moths, bees, and many new small mammals also appeared. Angiosperms also appeared during this period.

The climate during the Cretaceous was quite warm and sea levels varied greatly. Dinosaurs lived on land, and marine reptiles, ammonites, and thick-shelled clams lived in the ocean. New mammals and birds appeared, and flowering plants appeared for the first time. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event was one of the most serious mass extinction events in geological time, and most species, including the dinosaurs, perished.

The strata formed during this period of the Cretaceous are called "Cretaceous", and the abbreviation is K, which is the German abbreviation of Cretaceous.

According to scientists' estimates, the oxygen content of the atmosphere during the Cretaceous period was 150% of today's, the carbon dioxide content was 6 times that of the pre-industrial era, and the temperature was 4 times higher than today.

Dating

Like other ancient geological eras, the rock marks of the Cretaceous period are very obvious and clear, but the exact time of its beginning cannot be determined very precisely. The error is within between millions of years. There are no extinction events or biological evolutionary features between the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods that clearly separate the two eras. The end time of the Cretaceous period is relatively accurate, and it ended between 65 million and 66 million years ago BC. At that time, the entire earth's rock layers contained large amounts of iridium. Scientists generally believe that a huge meteorite hit the earth at that time, leaving a large crater on what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Due to this meteorite, a large number of organisms on the earth went extinct, which is called the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. After all, the history is long and difficult to verify, and now this theory is controversial.

Cretaceous sublayer

Early scientific literature divided the Cretaceous into three periods, which were: Newcombian, Gallican, and Cenocene. To draw a central unity, there are still different opinions on how to determine the top and bottom boundaries of the central unity. Around 1982, there was an international scientific organization called the "Mid-Cretaceous Event", which was very active. It mainly studied the biostratigraphy of the Cretaceous period, transgression and regression, anoxic events, geomagnetic field reversal, and the formation of salts and chalk. , the rupture of the South Atlantic and Mozambique Canyons, and the separation of the Indian Plate from Gondwana. The mid-Cretaceous is not an exact geological era concept. Some people calculate it from the Aptian period to the Thorntonian period, and most people calculate it from the Albian period to the Coniac period. The division of the Middle Cretaceous is rarely used internationally except in the Middle East. The Cretaceous dichotomy has been used for decades and is found in a large number of publications and geological maps. It is not suitable to change it at present.

The Cretaceous is divided based on European marine strata. It was initially divided into 67 stages based on ammonites. Later, some sub-stages were upgraded to 12 stages. However, some people are still used to classifying them into 67 stages. The four stages in the lower part of the Lower Cretaceous are collectively called the Neocomian Stage. The three stages of Coniac, Thornton and Campan in the middle part of the Upper Cretaceous are collectively called the Senonian. 53 ammonite zones can be divided into these 12 stages, and planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils are used as an important basis for the Cretaceous stage classification, zoning and intercontinental comparison.

Current scientific literature generally divides the Cretaceous into late and early periods, with a total of 12 periods, all named after European strata, and is subdivided from the latest to the earliest as follows:

Late Cretaceous

Maastrichtian: 70.60.6_65.80.3 million years

Campan: 83.50.7_70.60.6 million years< /p>

Santoian: 85.80.7_83.50.7 million years

Coniacian: 89.31.0_85.80.7 million years

Turonian: 93.50.8_89.31.0 million years

Cenomanian: 99.60.9_93.50.8 million years

Early Cretaceous

Albian: 112.01 .0_99.60.9 million years

Aptian: 125.01.0_112.01.0 million years

Baremian: 130.01.5_125.01.0 million years

Hautrevian: 136.42.0_130.01.5 million years

Fanlan current: 140.23.0_136.42.0 million years

Beria: 145.54 .0_140.23.0 million years

What types of dinosaurs are there?

The types of dinosaurs include: carnivorous dinosaurs, coelurosaurs, prosauropods, Sauropods, ornithopods, stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs, etc.

1. Carnivores

The name Carnosaurus originally referred to various large theropod dinosaurs. They had huge heads and huge teeth that were different from each other. Small, light-boned coelurosaurs. The largest carnivorous dragon is Maposaurus in the subfamily Carcharodontinae of the superfamily Allosaurus and the family Carcharodontinae, which can weigh up to 12 tons.

2. Coelurosauria

Coelurosaurs have light and flexible bodies. Early representatives may be carnivorous, and later representatives may develop into omnivores, with some Eggs are their staple food.

3. Prosauropods

Prosauropods walk on two legs and are omnivorous. The head is not big, the top surface is smooth, the eye sockets are larger than all the holes in the head, the tear bone is slender, the front eye hole is gourd-shaped, and the occipital condyle is larger. The mandibular joint is lower than the dentition surface, the teeth are small, the tooth crown is short, there are weak longitudinal ridges on both sides, a small amount of serrations are seen on the front edge, and the tooth tips are not sharp. The neck is long, the neural spines and transverse processes are underdeveloped, the dorsal pyramid is biconcave, there are at least 23 anterior sacral vertebrae, 3 healed sacral vertebrae, and the front caudal vertebrae is higher.

4. Ornithopods

Ornithopods are the group with the most fossils among dinosaurs. They are also very complex and can walk on two or four legs. The mouth is generally flat, with a separate predentary in front of the mandible. The first dinosaur discovered and scientifically understood by people, the Iguanodon, belongs to this category.

5. Ceratopsians

Ceratopsians, the suborder Ceratopsians, are four-legged plants that walk on a branch of the order Ornithischia. The body length of eating dinosaurs can reach 9 meters. They live in herds and spend much of the day munching on vegetation, like a herd of giant sheep.

Thanks to dinosaur movies like "Jurassic Park" and its endless sequels, Tyrannosaurus rex is probably the most famous, most feared, and certainly the most popular dinosaur to roam the Earth. But now, T. rex may have a new contender for his title as undisputed king of the dinosaur world, or at least there was an earlier king before T. rex came along.

Utah scientists recently discovered an entirely new species by reassembling some bones collected from museums around the world. It is somewhat related to Tyrannosaurus rex, but lived earlier and spread throughout North America.

The team reports that Allosaurus jimmadseni weighed about 4,000 pounds and grew to nearly 30 feet long from head to tail.

It stands on two three-toed feet and has 80 serrated teeth that can be used to capture and chop prey, and it also has long curved claws to help hunt. For the Tyrannosaurus rex that we know very well, we can basically know that the weight of Tyrannosaurus rex is between 5-7 tons and the length is about 13 meters. This means that these earth overlords from an earlier era than Tyrannosaurus rex were much smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex.

For years, scientists have debated which specimen should be placed in the category Allosaurus, a species of dinosaur that stood on two legs, had a large body and was carnivorous. Now, Allosaurus de Gimardsenii has been declared the oldest of the genus, dating back 145 million years to the time of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Rose Mapron

Although its name has a romantic flower name like "rose", the aggressiveness of Rose Mapron can be ranked second. With a length of up to twelve meters and a maximum weight of six tons, it once became the largest carnivorous dinosaur on earth. And from the fossils that have been discovered, it can be concluded that the Rose Mapusaurus is a group that likes to hunt, and often hunts another type of dinosaur called Argentinosaurus. They lived on earth more than 100 million years ago, mainly in Patagonia, Argentina.

New carnivorous dinosaur footprints discovered in Sichuan

Telegraph on July 6, 2021, the dinosaur footprint research team of China University of Geosciences recently announced that a new carnivorous dinosaur footprint was discovered in Huangjing Town, Gulin County, Luzhou City, Sichuan Province. A number of well-preserved dinosaur footprints were discovered. The most important discovery was the recording of the footprints of a new species of Brontosaurus, named the footprints of Brontosaurus nobii. The research paper was published in the "Acta Palaeogeography" published on the 5th.

Caption: The footprints of carnivorous dinosaurs in Gulin, Sichuan

One day in July 2020, Lin Yongping, a villager in Yuanlin Village, Huangjing Town, Gulin, was cleaning up the river channel blocked by collapsed rocks after heavy rains. At that time, I found four uniformly spaced footprints on a stone slab that had been overturned by the flood. The footprints were evenly sized, with three fat toes in each footprint closely arranged, and the distance between each footprint was about 50 centimeters. Xu Ting, a government employee of Huangjing Town who had discovered many dinosaur footprints in Hanxi Village, Guihua Town, Gulin County, came after hearing the news, took photos of the footprints and sent them to relevant experts. Then paleontological experts from China University of Geosciences and Zigong Dinosaur Museum jointly led the team to Jinyu Creek. After careful investigation, they found that there were at least 4 sauropod tracks, 2 theropod tracks, and 4 isolated tracks distributed at the Jinyu Creek footprints. . There are water ripple marks on the surface of the sandstone where the footprints are preserved, and mud cracks are commonly developed in the siltstone, which represents the interbedding of meandering river sediments and small braided river sediments. In addition, the feldspathic quartz sandstone where the Goldfish Creek footprints are located also contains abundant invertebrate traces, such as sand frog traces and taney traces.

The most important discovery at the Goldfish Creek Footprint Site is the recording of the tracks of a new species of Apatosaurus nobii, named Apatosaurus nobii. Scholars classified it as a Brontosaurus footprint based on the obvious metatarsal pad marks on the second toe, because this batch of specimens is obviously different from the medium and large theropod footprints with big toe prints, such as the Chongqing footprint, and other real footprints. Brontosaurus tracks, Kayenta tracks, and Cretaceous Asian tracks, so a new species was named.

Close-up of the footprints:

According to estimates, the speed of the trace maker of the footprints of A. nobii was 3.89km/h, and the body length was about 4 meters. There are almost no skeletal fossils of theropod dinosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous of the Sichuan Basin, but based on fossil records from the Early Cretaceous in western China, it is inferred that the tracers may have been medium-sized allosaurids or carcharodontosaurid dinosaurs.

Apatosaurus tracks were first discovered in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts, USA, in the early 19th century.

The footprints of Apatosaurus Nobii are an important theropod footprint morphology. This is the only theropod footprint in China that has similarities with the footprints of the Jurassic Apatosaurus type species. kind of place. It can be said that the footprints of Apatosaurus nobii are the first reliable record of the Brontosaurus footprint species in the chalk, and it is also one of the few new relic species that was named after careful research. Its appearance in the Lower Cretaceous in southwestern China proves the existence of a successfully evolved branch of theropod dinosaurs - coexisting with the trackmakers of Megalodon, Zhangbei, Stenopodosaurus and other types of tracks. , may help to better understand the morphological changes of Apatosaurus and Apatosaurus-type tracks in space and time in the future.

This research was completed in collaboration with scholars such as Professor Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado at Denver, German footprint scholar Hendrick Klein, and Zigong Dinosaur Museum Peng Guangzhao and Ye Yong.

The only one in the world! Dinosaur footprints were found in a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan. What is the significance of this discovery?

In the earliest times, our earth was controlled by a group of huge carnivores, that is, dinosaurs, and their number was extremely large.

However, due to the impact of an asteroid, they all became extinct. The remaining creatures of the same period as the dinosaurs are still relatively small, and the number is not large, and many of them have become extinct one after another. If we can permanently discover some dinosaur fossils and some traces left by dinosaurs, it will be of great archaeological significance and can help us deduce what type of dinosaurs they are and how large they were. Recently, an expert team composed of associate professor Xing Lida, a doctoral supervisor at China University of Geosciences, and research librarian Peng Guangzhao from the Zigong Dinosaur Museum discovered dinosaur footprints in a restaurant in Sichuan. This discovery immediately caused a sensation throughout China and even the world. This is also the only dinosaur footprint found in a restaurant in the world.

It can only be said that the owner of this restaurant is really good at choosing places and directly burying dinosaur footprints in his hotel. If professionals hadn’t found this dinosaur, the footprints might have been buried. lifetime. So, what are the significance of this discovery? Let's discuss this topic together. This is of great significance, especially for our study of dinosaurs. The huge size of dinosaurs is enough to make us fearful. Further revealing some of the habits of dinosaurs can allow us to better understand what kind of creatures dinosaurs are. . Experts said that this discovery adds new information to the paleoenvironment and paleoecology of the early Cretaceous period in the area, and also lays a solid foundation for finding more dinosaur records in the Leshan area in the future.

In general, experts have said that this is a very meaningful discovery, so as ordinary people, we only need to follow the experts to explore. Originally, such a huge creature as a dinosaur could To have ruled the earth for hundreds of millions of years is already very miraculous. The discovery of dinosaurs in Sichuan this time proves that the number of dinosaurs in our country before will be a very large group.

A man found dinosaur footprints while eating at a restaurant in Sichuan. What is the specific situation?

In our daily lives, I believe many people are very fond of dinosaurs. When dinosaur fossils or dinosaur ruins occur somewhere, I believe many people will feel very excited. I ate at Sichuan Men's Restaurant and found dinosaur footprints in the courtyard. How can I be sure they are dinosaur footprints?

The defendant, Mr. Ou, happened to be eating in a gardening and flower restaurant. During the meal, Mr. Ou discovered that there were two areas similar to dinosaur footprints in the courtyard downstairs. Because Mr. Ou usually He is engaged in the stone business, so he is very sensitive to this kind of footprint. Then Mr. Ou immediately called researchers from China University of Geosciences. When the researchers rushed to the scene, they discovered that the two footprints were indeed dinosaur tinctures, and praised Mr. Ou's behavior and sensitive insight. Many friends expressed great surprise when they saw such a news report, and felt that this incident was very fateful. Netizens said that dinosaurs may have dined in this place like us.

Researchers from China University of Geosciences said that the significance of this discovery is very important because there are no traces of dinosaur-like life in Leshan City. After checking, it was found that these two dinosaurs were probably eight-meter-long sauropods. The two footprints here have been preserved for more than 100 million years. Many netizens expressed their excitement, and after discovering these two footprints, the hotel can be changed into a creative restaurant, so that more tourists can see these two footprints.

What I must tell everyone here means that when such possible or precious cultural relics are discovered, the relevant management personnel or geological survey scholars must be contacted as soon as possible. Only after this kind of expert appraisal can the use value of this kind of scenic spot and historic site be discovered. After discovering this kind of imprint, you must not destroy it casually, otherwise it is very likely that the imprint will be erased.