Re: Jurassic forest in DC

[smithjb@sas.upenn.edu (Joshua Smith)]

Tompaleo@aol.com wrote:

> Some of those footprints are supposed to be REAL! I helped collect them along
> with Rob Weems, Peter Kranz and employees of the Botanic Gardens ca 1993.
> They were recovered from the Pasaic Formation , Newark Supergroup (Late
> Triassic I believe though I have seen a recent date of Early Jurassic
> somewhere) near Coopersburg Pa.
        The Passaic Formation is Carnian and Norian (Late Triassic).

 The tracks were principally of the
> 'grallator' type , all but one were theropod, and we may have even recovered
> a prosauropod track but I have never heard what the final word on it was.

        OK.  Enough of this.  There is currently no published data that 
is valid that supports the assignment of the _Dilophosaurus_ sp. to the 
large "theropod" tracks of the Newark Supergroup called _Eubrontes_.  
Given the sample size of _Dilophosaurus_ there is NO data whatsoever 
supporting the assignment of _Dilophosaurus_ to _Grallator_.  In fact, 
and this stuff is still within the bowels of the great publishing 
machines, the most current data that I know of doesn't support the 
assignment of any specific trackmaker to these ichnotaxa, but only states 
that they are theropod.

        Sorry.  It just irritates me when people (or institutions) lable 
a footprint as having been made by a certain animal when they have no way 
to support it.

Cheers,
-bones

-- 
__________________________
Josh Smith
Department of Geology
University of Pennsylvania
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240 South 33rd Street
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smithjb@sas.upenn.edu