Dinosaur tracks from the Late Cretaceous Sabinas Basin (Mexico)

In 2003 vertebrate tracks attributed to pterosaur, crocodiles, turtles, hadrosaurs and sauropods have been reported from a locality close to Sabinas (Coahuila) in the Sierra Madre Oriental (Maastrichtian). Three trackways of medium-sized theropods could be observed. Evenly spaced parallel scratches forming a trackway might have been left by a swimming pterosaur. Furthermore a clear tetradactyl imprint, with claw marks only can be temptatively assigned to a pterosaur. So far, we have observed tracks of theropods only and probable prints of pterosaurs. The purported turtle tracks are small paired and tripled very faint scratches that have been produced by a xiphosuran arthropod. These are the first limulid tracks from Mexico. Another locality, Santa Helena, close to the village of Melchior Musquiz (Campanian) yields several surfaces with dinosaur fooprints. The best preserved trackway is attributed to a large theropod. ka u p ia D ar m st äd te r B e