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Earth Science Frontiers, Vol. 17, Special Issue, Aug. 2010 ISSN 1005-2321 230 Preliminary Study on Fossils of Dinosaur Footprints and its Significance from Zhaojue Area of Xichang County in Sichuan Province Jian Liu 1 , Kui Li 1 , Chunyan Yang 1 , Tao Jiang 2 1. The Museum of Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China (E-mail: liujian@cdut.edu.cn) 2. Institute Of Sedimentary Geology of Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China A series of footprints of sauropods from Zhaojue area of Xichang in Sichuan are described and palaeo- environmental analysis is also carried out. In February 2006, large scale dinosaur footprints fossils were discovered in Sanbiluoga Village of San- chahe in Jiefanggou Area of Zhaojue County of Xi- chang City. There are about 1000 footprints were preserved on the exposed surface of thick red muddy siltstones developing oblique beddings, which is about 1500 square kilometers. It is the largest dinosaur footprints fossil group discovered in Sichuan up to now. The morphological features of the large foot prints point to typical sauropods, like length>width ellipse- shape hindfoot, and width>length hemicycle-shape forefoot, and forefoot is smaller than hindfoot. Preliminary studies on the shapes and movement patterns of these footprints suggest there were sauropods, pterosaurs and theropods living together in this area at that time. Most of the footprints belong to sauropods, some are pterosaurs’, and few theropods footprints were discovered not far from the main fossil area. Sichuan Basin is one of the regions with re- latively complete and well developing Mesozoic strata exposed in China. Rivers and lakes were everywhere in the warm and humid Sichuan Basin during the Mesozoic dinosaur era. The earliest dinosaur footprints in Sichuan Basin were discovered by Yang (1941) in Guanyuan County. More and more dinosaur footprints fossils have been reported in Yibin County since 1949, but they were usually sporadic distributed with a small number, and never formed a trace line. Before the discovery in Zhaojue County, most of dinosaur footprints from Sichuan Basin are produced by bipedal dinosaurs, except the ones found in Jurassic and Early Cretaceous strata. Quadruped stegosaurus and sauropods are commonly occurred in the Late Jurassic strata of Sichuan Basin, such as Mamen- chisaurus hechuanensis, Huayangosaurus taibaii etc., but few footprints of sauropods were found. So such a large group of fossilized dinosaur tracks discovered in Zhaojue County has undoubtedly added new materials to the research on sauropods of Sichuan Basin. The sauropod footprints in Zhaojue County are si- milar to those from Chuxiong of Yunnan, with narrow step spacing. Chen and Huang (1993) researched the large sauropod footprints in Chuxiong of Yunnan, named Canglingchuxiong Footprints and suggested the age of these footprints could be Cretaceous. But Lockley et al. (2002) restudied the specimens from Chuxiong, and put them into Brachiosaurus. Most of the dinosaur footprints from Chuxiong belong to sauropod, some are theropod’s, but no ornithopod tracks. Chen et al. (2006) reviewed the ages of strata with dinosaur footprints of China, and the dinosaur footprints from Chuxiong should be Cretaceous in their opinion. It is also the first time of pterosaurs footprints discovered in Sichuan Basin. It was a set of lacustrine sediments yielding dinosaur footprints in Zhaojue, and at that time the water level changed many times. According to the 1:200,000 scale geological mapping in the Xichang area of Geological Bureau of Sichuan Province in 1977, this area belongs to the Feitianshan Formation, and the age of Feitianshan Formation is Late Jurassic. The discovery of dinosaur footprints in Zhaojue Area of Xichang is of great significance to study the dinosaur habits and related paleoclimatic environment. Key Words: Zhaojue; Dinosaur footprints; Sauropods; Pterosaurs; Feitianshan Formation References: Li R.H., Zhang G.W. New Dinosaur ichotaxon from the Early Cretaceous Laiyang Group in the Laiyang Basin, Shandong Province. Geological Review, 2000, 46(6): 60-610 (in Chinese with English abstract). Lockley M., Wright J., White D., et al. The First Sauropod Trackways from China. Cretaceous Research, 2002, 23: 363-381. Yang X.L., Yang D.H. The Dinosaur Footprints in Sichuan Basin. Chengdu: Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing House, 1987: 1-30. Yu X.Q., Kobayashi Y., Lü J.C. The Preliminary Study of the Dinosaur Footprints form Huang- shan, Anhui Province, Vertebrata PalAsiatica, 1999, 37(4): 285-290 (in Chinese with English abstract). Zhen S.N., Li J.J., Han Z.K., et al. The Study of
Earth Science Frontiers, Vol. 17, Special Issue, Aug. 2010 ISSN 1005-2321 Dinosaur Footprints in China. Chengdu: Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing House, 1996: 1-110 (in Chinese with English abstract). Zhen S.N., Li J.J. The Dinosaur and Bird Footprints from the Lower Cretaceous of Emei, Sichuan. Memoirs of Beijing Natural History Museum, 1996, 54: 108-120 (in Chinese with English abstract) 231
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