An international team of paleontologists has discovered a 5.7 cm long stegosaur footprint in Xinjiang Province, China.
A reconstruction of the life of stegosaurs and the paleomedium 110 million years ago. Image credit: Kaitoge.
The new stegozaur imprint was left about 110 million years ago (early Cretaceous era).
It belongs to the ichnogen Deltapod and co-appears with the traces of older individuals.
Found in the Tugulu Group, China’s Xinjiang Province, is only 15% as long as the type of Deltapodus curriei from the same locality.
“This imprint was made by a herbivorous, armored dinosaur, generally known as the stegozaur – the family of dinosaurs that includes the famous Stegosaurus“Said Dr. Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences.
“That Stegosaurus, this dinosaur probably had points on its tail and bone plates along its back, as an adult. ”
“With a footprint of less than 6 cm, this is the smallest known stegosaurus footprint in the world.”
“It is in stark contrast to other stegosaur footprints found on the Chinese site, which measured up to 30 cm, and the footprints found in places like Broome, in Western Australia, where they can reach up to 80 cm.”
The smallest stegozaur footprint in the world, Xingjiang Province, China. Image credit: Lida Xing.
The tiny fingerprint of the stegosaurs has similar characteristics to the other fingerprints of the stegosaurs with three short, wide, round fingerprints.
However, Dr. Romilio and colleagues found that the imprint was not elongated, as were the larger fingerprints of counterparts found on the runway sites, suggesting that the young stegosaurus behaved differently.
“Stegosaurs usually walked with their heels on the ground, just like humans, but on all fours, which creates long footprints,” said Dr. Romilio.
“The small route shows that this dinosaur was moving with its heel raised from the ground, just like a bird or a cat today.”
“I’ve only seen shortened tracks like this before when dinosaurs walked on two legs.”
“It was plausible for the young stegosaurs to walk,” said Dr. Lida Xing, a paleontologist at the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Biogeology and Geology and the School of Earth Sciences and Resources at China University of Geosciences.
“This could be possible, because this is the ancestral condition and position of most dinosaurs, but the stegosaurus could have passed to the heel as it got older.”
“A complete set of pieces of these small fingerprints would give us the answer to this question, but unfortunately we only have one fingerprint.”
The study was published online in the journal Palaios.
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Lida Xing et al. 2021. Set of Stegosaur tracks in Xinjiang, China, with the lowest known stegosaur record. Palaios 36 (2): 68-76; doi: 10.2110 / palo.2020.036