Jurassic ornithopods track back: insights from the ichnological record of the Lusitanian Basin

In the precedent post we presented evidence that suggested that ornithopod dinosaurs in Portugal during the Late Jurassic were more diverse than we previosly thought.  We also some found some intriguing evidence that some specimens were resembling Early Cretaceous species more than their coeval Jurassic relatives.

 Another line of evidence supporting this interpretation comes from the rich ichnological record  of the Lusitanian Basin. Alongside with body fossils, tracks are a pretty common findings in the Upper Jurassic exposures of the Lusitanian Basin. 
Tracks do not just give an idea about which kind of animals roamed Portugal 150 millions of year ago, but also give information about their behaviour and iteractions. 

Castenera and colleagues (2020) examined several  footprints housed in the collections of Sociedade de Historia Natural (SHN), proceeding from the upper Kimmeridgian and lower Tithonian outcrops around the areas of  Torres Vedras and Lourinhã municipalities. They found out a rich assemblage of footprints, representing small sized ornithopod/neornithischians and larger iguanodontians. Among the others, they recovered a morphotype (Iguanodontipodidae) which was previously unknown in the Jurassic but it becomes suddenly common in the Cretaceous. Iguanodontipodidae is a morphotype relatable with large sized iguanodontians which were roaming Europe in the Early Cretaceous. Although it is not possible to link these new findings directly to the body fossil evidence collected so far, this is another piece of the puzzle which help to clarify the radiation of Iguanodontia.

Tracks of Iguanodontipodidae, from Castanera et al., 2020

References 

Castanera, D., Silva, B. C., Santos, V. F., Malafaia,E., & Belvedere, M. Tracking Late Jurassic ornithopods in the LusitanianBasin of Portugal: Ichnotaxonomic implications.