Dinosaur "Death Pits" Created by Giant's Footprints?

Janurary 19, 2010

Following in a giant dinosaur's footsteps could be fatal—but not for the reasons you might suspect.

Mysterious "death pits" holding the fossil skeletons of nearly two dozen small dinosaur species may actually be the 160-million-year-old footprints of an ancient behemoth, a new study suggests.

(See pictures of the dinosaur "death pits.")

The first of three dino-filled pits was unearthed nearly a decade ago in northwestern China's remote Xinjiang region.

Inside the 3.5- to 6.5-foot-deep (1- to 2-meter-deep) depressions were the largely complete skeletons of several species of small theropods, bipedal raptors from the lineage that includes Tyrannosaurus rex.


The stacked fossils included Guanlong, or "crested dragon," a T. tex ancestor with a Mohawk-like head adornment. Limusaurus, also found in the pits, was a probable herbivore with an intriguing hand that some experts believe links dinosaur limbs to bird wings.

Even as scientists celebrated these rare fossil finds, a mystery remained: What created the death traps in which the animals were entombed?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/779db1b18e31.jpg[/atsimg]
Two small Guanlong wucaii dinosaurs struggle to escape a muddy pit in what is now China during the late Jurassic period.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

"All of the geological data indicated to us that we're dealing with sediments that were originally very rich in fluids," said Eberth, of Alberta's Royal Terryll Museum "These were never empty holes in the landscape."

These amazing creatures were doomed as we may be one day in the not to far future.

Very interesting and thanks for posting it! I love dinosaur tracks and this seems entirely plausible to me. Someone had a flash of intuition to come up with that answer, something few scientists seems to value anymore.
The churning action of the larger sauropod feet may well have turned ordinary wet mud into death traps for smaller animals. Given the regularity of the size of the pits I would say they have the right anwer. Star and flag.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


I agree with you, once in a while we are lucky and a scientist makes perfect sense, looking a something from a logical perspective when there is no scientific proof is a great concept.

Thanks for the info. Fascinating. My god can you only imagine what the Earth looked like when dinosaurs roamed? How pristine and beautiful it must have been?

reply to post by Aquarius1
Flagged for sharing something new. The Mamenchisaurus was a whopper!

In 1972, a second species of Mamenchisaurus was discovered (M. hochuanensis) with a neck that reached up to 9.3 m (31 ft) in length. This species had a complete neck preserved which contained 19 vertebrae. In 1994, the Sauroposeidon was discovered in the United States, with a neck estimated to be between 10.5 and 11.5 meters (34.5–37.5 feet) long

I'm not keen on the idea of its footprints causing those pits, but who the hell am I to argue with people that do it for a living?!

reply to post by Zosynspiracy


My thoughts exactly, look what has happened to our beautiful Gaia, there are still pristine area's but getting fewer and fewer as time goes on, I remember as a child thinking how vast and beautiful our planet is and nothing could harm it.