Volume 27 1990

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Dinosaur tracks in Triassic Molteno sediments: the earliest evidence of dinosaurs in South Africa?
(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1990) Raath, Michael A; Kitching, James W; Shone, Russell W; Rossouw, G J
A fossil tracksite containing well-preserved tridactyl footprints of bipedal theropod dinosaurs is reported from fluvial overbank deposits of Molteno age (Stormberg Group: Triassic) in the northeastern Cape Province, South Africa. They occur stratigraphically below the mudrocks of the Elliot Formation, in which dinosaur remains are comparatively common, and are taken to represent the earliest evidence for dinosaurs in South Africa. They also represent the earliest unequivocal evidence of tetrapods in Molteno deposits.
Fossil vertebrate tracks near Murraysburg, Cape Province
(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1990) McRae, Colin S
The presence of a palaeosurface with a set of relatively large concave epirelief tracks that extend for some 60 m is documented and described. The trackmaker is believed to be a member of the genus Aulacephalodon Seeley 1898 or Rhachiocephalus Seeley 1898 and to have walked across a submerged silty surface on a floodplain. A mud veneer deposited under relatively low energy conditions soon after the tracks were made, and the thermal alteration of the sediment by nearby diabase intrusives, contributed to the preservation of this set of fossil tracks.