Huge assemblage of fossil trackways found in Western Australia

[Halichoeres]

https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2017/03/australias-jurassic-park-worlds-most-diverse

Huge trove of trackways showing a dinosaur fauna including 5 theropods, 6 sauropods, 4 ornithopods, and 6 thyreophorans including a stegosaur (!). One of the sauropods had a footprint 1.7 m long, so I could just about lie down in it.

It looks like the paper is open access, but I haven't been able to download it as the Taylor and Francis web site keeps making my browser seize up.

[E.D.G.E. (PainterRex)]

So.. I guess there were stegosaurs in Austrlia then? Wonder if they ever fossilized?

[Jose S.M.]

That's interesting, very diverse fauna in that zone. And the first report of a stegosaur there!

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks for linking, Halichoeres, but yes, the source site is a pain to load and I need find a way to get the PDF working.

That's great news, thinking of how rare are any kind of fossil material on that old, eroded and deserted land. So many different species and I bet for at least a few of them, noone will ever know what the animal that left them looked like. I find it especially exciting, that these trackways are part of the Dream Time mythology of the ancient Aboriginal tribes and a nice example of those things that are long know and completely "normal" to indigeneous people, while the "white men" got no clue of it - but yes, it's a big country and the Kimberly Regionparticularly inaccessible.

Here's some pictures from Broome, quite near (in Australian terms) to the location of the trackways.

Not color enhanced, the sandstone and sea looks like that


Footprint of an unknown, medium sized theropod. While the tourist information provides a detailed map where to find it, one got only very limited time during full tidal fall to find that footprint (as mentioned in the video) in an area grown with algae and the usual "sea stuff" (as crabs, squids and several other things you don't want to step in - also, there's potentially Salties there), so it's still not easy to find...


... which is why there's a copy of the print on the beach that also looks much clearer, as the original could be easily mistken for a natural erosion - which it will be in time.

[Loon]

Fascinating; always great to here of new animals found, especially in places where their kind had never been before, as shown by the stegosaur tracks. The video in the link is a real interesting watch; the stuff about the local people associating the theropod tracks with their creation myth about an emu god creating the world was rather intriguing.  I may have to stop being an atheist, because, I think I've found the true god, the emu god.

[BlueKrono]

See, the Aborigines got the connection between birds and dinosaurs long before it ever occurred to white Europeans.

[ZoPteryx]

Amazing stuff!  Australia seems to have so much dinosaur fossil potential, I think it's only a matter of time before someone hits the motherload!

It looks like the paper is open access, but I haven't been able to download it as the Taylor and Francis web site keeps making my browser seize up.

Yeah, it took me a couple tries, but eventually I got it to download.  Very slowly, that is.

Maybe this direct link will work better:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02724634.2016.1269539?needAccess=true

[Cloud the Dinosaur King]

I was right about to post this when I found out you had already posted it. No hurt feelings though.