藏东地区发现罕见的恐龙足迹群和古大象足迹群

Discovery of an unique middle Jurassic dinosaur footprints association and a Paleogene elephant footprints group in East Tibet,China

西藏昌都市卡若区发现罕见的蜥脚类、兽脚类、鸟脚类频密共生的恐龙足迹化石群,产于中侏罗世达布卡组滨湖相沉积中;昌都市江达县雪集拉山发现古近纪大象足迹化石群,产于贡觉组湖相、三角洲相地层中.这两个化石群是青藏高原中新生代地质演化的重要历史见证,对研究青藏高原隆升和恐龙、古大象的迁徙、演化、古生态有着极其重要的意义.

In East Tibet,373 middle Jurassic dinosaur footprints from ten locations in Karuo District,Changdu City and more than 280 Paleogene elephant footprints from four locations in the Xuejila Mountain,Jiangda County have been discovered.At the Wenda Village site of Karuo District,a 60 m^(2) cliff of the Middle Jurassic Dabuka Formation composed of purple sandstone and mudstone is unusual and impressive.It contains more than 183 different size well-preserved convex sauropods,ornithopods,and theropods footprints within 2.45 m-thick strata of eight beds.The ornithopod and theropod's footprints are first discovered in Tibet,and the small-type theropods Wildeichnu ichnogenus is first found in China.The Paleogene elephant footprints are discovered in a concave form in purplish-red sandstone of the Paleocene-Eocene Gongjue formation near the roadside at Xuejila mountain,west to Jiangda,east Tibet.These footprints are from four different sites.Large amouts of footprints concentrated in one unique site of high-elevation rock outcrop about 110 m^(2),in which 165 footprints were measured while other more than 100 footprints are hard to reach.This is the first time Paleogene elephant footprint fossils have been reported in China.