Gigantic footprint of a theropod dinosaur in the Early Jurassic of Poland
Gerard Gierliński, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, and Grzegorz Pieńkowski
A gigantic theropod footprint was discovered in the Hettangian alluvial plain deposits of the Holy Cross Mountains, central Poland. This discovery, along with a previous find in Arizona, provides ichnological evidence of a global occurrence of gigantic predatory dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic. The geographic and stratigraphic distribution of such gigantic theropods in Jurassic times was wider than generally believed. However, it seems justified to assume that very large theropods were less common in the Early Jurassic communities than they became in the Late Jurassic.
Gerard Gierliński, Państwowy Instytut Geologiczny, ul. Rakowiecka 4, PL-00-975 Warszawa, Poland; Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki [GrzegorzNiedzwiedzki@poczta.net-line.pl], Piotrowice 91 m. 5, PL-23-107 Strzyiewice, Poland; Grzegorz Pieńkowski [gpie@pgi.waw.pl ], Państwowy Instytut Geologiczny, ul. Rakowiecka 4, PL-00-975 Warszawa, Poland.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (for details please see creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Full text (253.8 kB)