Re: Huaxisaurus, Liaoning age and AMNH site

["T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>]

[Mark Norell, as posted by Mickey Mortimer]

> First Huaxisaurus is not a dinobird.  I have the specimen here on loan
> in NYC and it is being worked on by one of my students and myself.
> It is a fairly big animal (longer than 170 cm) with some real
> surprises in the skeleton.

Sometimes I just wish they'd say, "This find is very boring; really pretty
typical," and not cause impatience. :)
(Well, not really.)

> The age of the fossil beds in western Liaoning is debated.  Certain
> faunal elements suggest a Late Jurassic age; radiometric work from
> several sites near Sihetun has suggested conflicting dates of 124.6
> mybp or 147 mybp.  The age of these beds is a complex problem and
> probably several ages are represented at different quarry sites.  No
> radiometric samples exist from the Fanzhangzi quarry (NGMC 91 site)
> and stratigraphic correlations are imprecise because the Fanzhangzi
> quarry is over 130 kilometers from the Sihetun site.

So, which quarry sites *were* reliably dated (if any)? And which fauna are
from those sites?

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