Sauropods in wet versus dry environments... a tip of the hat to some past artists (Was Re. Lost Worlds)

["Ray Stanford" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    Dan Pigdon astutely observed, "...it's interesting how sauropods
reconstructions seem to be coming full circle."

    It's nice to know that someone else has noticed.

    Dan further observed, "Sauropods were also thought to be dependent on
water. Then they were dry-land animals that avoided wet areas at any cost.
Now we get the likes of Paralititan, which seemed to live in a tidal
environment. Also,
the Broome trackways in Western Australia tend to show more sauropod prints
in lagoonal settings. I've even read in modern sources that sauropods may
have rested in shallow (at least, for them) water."

    Let's add in many other wet sauropod track sites, including the famous
and excellently detailed sauropod trackways near Glen Rose, Texas, which are
in a carbonate (hence marine-derived) substrate, as are others from Texas
and Arkansas.  Add also the ones I have found here in two different counties
here in Maryland, which occur in several different types of substrate, but
all of which indicate wetlands types of paleoenvironment, ranging from
seemingly deltaic fan type situations, to outright swamps, and maybe flood
plains.

    The Purgatoire Valley tracksite in south-eastern Colorado (Morrison
Formation) includes several often-illustrated parallel sauropod trackways.
These, too, were produced when the animals tracked through wet environments.
A great number of these trackways are in limestone.

    Sauropod tracks from Cretaceous Jindong Formation of southern Korea were
formed in what is said to be a lacustrine depositional environment
characterized by shallow water and cyclic shoaling and emergence.

    List member Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia, along with colleagues, has produced
a very superb and in-depth paper [Estratto da Memoire de Scienze Geologiche,
Vol. 52/2, Padova 2000, pp. 193-292, ISSN 0391-8602] describing new dinosaur
track sites in the Albian (Early Cretaceous) of the Istrian peninsula
(Croatia).  The opus includes detailed description of sauropod trackways in
the "Periadriatic Carbonate platforms".

    Likewise, Dalla Vecchia, with colleagues, has done an excellent paper
[Bollettino della Societa Paleontologica Italiana, 40 (1), 2001, pp. 25-53,
Modena, Aprile, 2001, ISSN 0375-7633] describing dinosaur track sites in the
upper Cenomanian (Late Cretaceous) of the Istrian Peninsula (Croatia).
Sauropod tracks are described that are found in the, "Cretaceous
Adriatic-Dinaric Carbonate Platform".  The presence of dinosaurs tracking
therein, "...suggests the existence of emergent areas on the carbonate
platform despite the fact that the late Cenomanian is considered an interval
of sea level highstand and the geologic evidence of emersion of the platform
is very scarce in Istria".

    Although the PDF file by the Queensland Museum dated October, 2000,
quoted by Dan Pigdon ads that, "...plenty of tracks have been found that
show herds of sauropods walking on dry land",  I question whether that can
be substantiated, and half wonder whether the author of those words confused
present environments for past ones and thought that just because sauropod
tracks are found in Texas and in highlands of Colorado, that sauropods must
have been tracking around in desert environment.  :-} :-o  Personally, I
suspect that damp (instead of wet) would have been a more accurate term.
Undoubtedly, sauropods tracked through dry environments at times, but it
seems questionable that such tracks would be even reasonably well preserved.
The Australian sauropod tracks that I have seen via photos available on the
internet were clearly made in a quite wet situation.

    Off the top of my head I can recall no sauropod tracks or trackways from
other than rather wet environs.  Of course, there may be a preservational
bias in all this, but I doubt for several reasons that sauropods would
survive very long in areas without plenty of water.

    Some of our most beloved dinosaur artists of bygone days were, IMHO,
right all along, about the choice environments of these great animals.  Long
live sauropods wading in swamps and in marine environments!

    Ray Stanford, departing in a flame-proof suit.

"You know my method.  It is founded upon the observance of trifles." --
Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery