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Isochirotherium trackways, their possible trackmakers (?Arizonasaurus): intercontinental giant archosaur migrations in the Middle Triassic tsunami-influenced carbonate intertidal mud flats of the European Germanic Basin

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Abstract

A remarkable Middle Triassic (Pelsonian, Anisian) fossil track site at Bernburg in Central Germany permits reconstruction of a tetrapod fauna at the point of recovery when early poposaur quadruped dinosaurs diversificated globally. The site has yielded numerous tetrapod and thousands of arthropod horseshoecrab tracks from several levels in intertidal biolaminites with intercalated storm and seismic-influenced carbonates. The tetrapod tracks, Procolophonichnium, Rhynchosauroides, Chirotherium, and Isochirotherium, are assigned to smaller Archosauromorpha and large Archosauria. The largest chirotheroid tracks Isochirotherium herculis (Egerton in Proc Geol Soc London 3:14–15, 1838) reach up to 350-mm-long pes sizes and 120-mm-long manus imprints. Those were most probably made by a 5-m-long poposauroid archosaur like Arizonasaurus, based on matching skeleton anatomy and trackways including a new three-dimensional model of those giants in locomotion. A first German poposauroid bone record is added herein with a scapula from shallow marine carbonates of similar Pelsonian ages. These crurotarsan archosaurs were at the top of their food chains globally, and fed most probably on smaller tetrapods (Hescheleria, Macrocnemus), the latter also represented well by long behavioural escaping Rhynchosauroides trackways. The smaller reptiles may have fed especially on “Millions” of horseshoecrab eggs in those arthropod reproduction seasons in the intertidal carbonate mud flats. Such tidal flats and sabkhas extended over hundreds of square kilometres surrounding the Germanic Basin in Central Europe in the Middle Triassic, representing a drastic change in the palaeoenvironment of central Pangaea, and a possible trigger for continuing diversification of archosauromorphs and eventually dinosaurs. The horseshoecrab reproduction seasons seem to have caused a food chain reaction along the southern Pangaean (northern Tethys) coast in carbonate mud flats between Northern America, Africa, Europe and China, with possibly long-distance migrations of poposauroids such as Arizonasaurus, whose bones were found in terrestrial to shallow marine carbonate deposits in terrest to coastal context.

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Acknowledgments

First, I thank Prof. Dr. M. Benton for a critical scientific support and language spell check, such as many comments. I thank the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Saxony-Anhalt, and in particular Prof. Dr. H. Meller and Prof. Dr. J.-H. Olbertz, the former Minister of Education and Culture of Saxony-Anhalt, for their support and for financing the excavations. I am also grateful to Dr. S. Friederich for coordinating the large surface excavation campaign. The excavation 2010 was sponsored by the Bernburger Freizeit GMBH of the city Bernburg due to main activities of the mayor H. Schultka and the manager R. Reichelt. This excavation was supported in the logistics by Dr. R. Wiermann of the Museum Schloss Bernburg, which museum keeps all material of the 2010 project. I thank Solvay Chemicals (especially J. Lischka) for support and permits for excavations in their quarry. Parts of the research were funded by the Solvay Chemicals GmbH. Comparisons to other Isochirotherium tracks from the German Buntsandstein redbeds were made possible by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (curator Dr. N. Hauschke), and Museum of the Humboldt-University Berlin (curator PD Dr. O. Hampe), such as Senckenbergmuseum Frankfurt. I thank Prof Dr. G. H. Bachmann and Dr. N. Hauschke for their scientific support and discussions. I thank the Museum in Phoenix, Arizona for permission to use the Arizonasaurus skeleton photo. Finally, I thank A. Hass and E. Werner who produced the 3D-model for the ARTE documentary film “Saurier Code” which was performed by Hofrichter und Jacobs under scientific consulting of the author (company PaleoLogic) in 2011. The research was sponsored by the private research institute PaleoLogic (http://www.paleologic.eu).

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Diedrich, C. Isochirotherium trackways, their possible trackmakers (?Arizonasaurus): intercontinental giant archosaur migrations in the Middle Triassic tsunami-influenced carbonate intertidal mud flats of the European Germanic Basin. Carbonates Evaporites 30, 229–252 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13146-014-0228-z

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