Sauropods, environments & footprints

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

RE: the recent discussions of sauropods and footprints:

I) It is apparent that sauropods lived in many diverse environments, from
coastal swamps to interior regions with high levels of seasonality.  That
shouldn't be a big surprise for a taxon of large terrestrial animal that
existed minimally from the latest Triassic to the latest Cretaceous.

II) While it is true you can preserve footprints in sandy environments
(e.g., the Navajo Sandstone, the Cocconino Sandstone), these can only be
preserved with the addition of a little water soon after impression (and
minimally before wind erodes or buries the impressions).

III) However, there are some environments (paleosols and floodplain deposits
generally) where  the nature of preservation makes it unlikely to preserve
ANY footprints, large or small.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796