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Preliminary report on a dinosaur tracksite from Lower Cretaceous strata in Mount Lebanon

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Abstract

A dinosaur tracksite was discovered in Batha on the side of the road from Harissa to Ghosta (Keserwan, Lebanon). About ten trackways are exposed at the top of two beds of Lower Cretaceous limestones over an area of approximately 1000 m2. These footprints were probably made by at least two dinosaur species, Sauropoda and either Theropoda or Ornithopoda. The site, which is the first record from Lebanon, should be protected to allow further scientific investigations.

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Acknowledgements

This research is a contribution to project N° 30959NJ - PHC CEDRE 2014, supported by of the research project of Hubert-Curien Partnership program (PHC) CEDRE, implemented in Lebanon and France by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministère des Affaires étrangères, MAE) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, MESR) led by Bruno Granier (France) and Dany Azar (Lebanon). This paper is also a contribution of the team project “Biodiversity: Origin, Structure, Evolution and Geology” led by Dany Azar at the Lebanese University. This work has been partially funded with support from the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon within the project: “Holostratigraphy of the “falaise de Blanche” formation and updating of the geological maps” allotted to Dany Azar. Finally, the authors are grateful to the reviewers for their detailed critical reviews of the original manuscript and also to Phil Salvador who helped polishing the English text.

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Correspondence to Bruno Granier.

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Jean-Claude Paicheler died before publication of this work was completed

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Gèze, R., Veltz, I., Paicheler, JC. et al. Preliminary report on a dinosaur tracksite from Lower Cretaceous strata in Mount Lebanon. Arab J Geosci 9, 730 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-016-2759-1

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