Dinosaur trackway reveals new species

USAToday-Science Fair: Dinosaur trackway reveals new species
Chinese paleontologists report the discovery of roughly 125 dinosaur footprints in a trackway more than 100 million years old. Tridactyl theropod tracks from the Zhucheng site.
CAPTIONElsevier, Cretaceous Research
The find points to at least one new species, reports the team led by Rihui Li of the Chinese Geological Survey in the Cretaceous Research journal, and adds to evidence that northeastern China saw a landscape dominated by birds and two-legged theropod dinosaurs in the era from 146 to 100 million years ago.

Researchers first turned up the trackway in 2006, and it underwent four years of measurement and excavation. The analysis finds at least three types of dinosaurs left their footprints in the mud that fossilized to form the trackway.

"The largest morphotype (kind) is a large theropod represented by a single trackway and an isolated natural cast," write the authors, finding the creature had a foot about 11 inches long. The others had feet only about 5 inches long and one appears to be a newly-discovered species, which the authors named, Corpulentapus lilasia, which roughly means "stout-footed lily of the East".

Paleontologists particularly relish trackway sites as indicators of behavior and gait in dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Parallel tracks have demonstrated some dinosaurs were social creatures who traveled in groups, for example.