A dinosaur movement deduced from a theropod trackway with mud immersion footprints and tail drag structures (Villar del Arzobispo Formation. Galve, Teruel, Spain).

Abstract

Two trackways were identified in the Villar del Arzobispo Formation (Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous) from El Cantalar (Galve, Teruel) paleoichnological site: one corresponding to an enormous crocodile, and the other to a theropod with semiplantigrade gait. Washing and erosion of the outcrop has cleaned the known and a adjacent part, revealing various new tracks to the theropod trackway. While reviewing the site, we can see new prints, and new structures that modified the initial interpretation of the semiplantigrade trackway due to the aditional data that were obtained. Additional observations enabled us to construct the print formation process on very soft ground, to describe a new example of a dinosaur tail trackway - the first discovered in Aragon - and, finally, to apply the information obtained from the trackway and coordinate the lateral and vertical swinging of the body of the animal with the tracks for each limb while walking.