Plik:Laguna Colorada environment.jpg

Opis

Tytuł: Paleogeographic reconstruction of Mussaurus nesting grounds in the Early Jurassic Laguna Colorada Formation of southern Argentina. The preferred nesting areas were around the margins of floodplain lakes formed in the depocenter during the post-rift sag phase of basin development. Block diagrams 1, 2 and 3 depict the taphonomic processes that operated in the area delimited in yellow on the landscape reconstruction and led to preservation of numerous Mussaurus skeletons alongside their unhatched egg clusters. 1, Wind-driven dust storms deposit thick beds of silt and volcanic ash in and around a permanent floodplain lake. 2, Year after year, during the dry season, resident herds of Mussaurus excavate “egg chambers” into the sparsely vegetated loessic silt. 3, Some years the lake level rose too early and drowned unhatched egg clutches, other years they suffocated beneath a deep layer of ash-laden loess. The decomposition products of buried bones and eggs formed a halo in the surrounding silt which promoted seasonal precipitation of palustrine carbonate around the remains similar to that described from loessic plains of China (Li et al., 2018). Źródło: Pol, D., Mancuso, A. C., Smith, R. M., Marsicano, C. A., Ramezani, J., Cerda, I. A., Otero, A., Fernandez, V. 2021. Earliest evidence of herd-living and age segregation amongst dinosaurs. Scientific reports, t. 11, nr 1, 20023. [1] Licencja: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License