Dinosaur Tracks

Ten years ago a book about dinosaur tracks would have appealed to a handful of specialists. Today, it is likely to attract wider interest, in the wake of some major controversies about the natural history of dinosaurs. Few readers will be completely unaware of those spirited debates about 'cold~blooded' versus 'warm~blooded' dinosaurs, and eyebrows are no longer raised at the suggestion that dinosaurs may still be alive and kicking - in the guise of birds. Issues such as these have prompted many biologists and palaeontologists to take a serious second look at the everyday lives and habits of dinosaurs, and in doing so they have begun to turn their attention to the long~neglected study of fossil tracks - the direct testimony of dinosaur behaviour. This resurgence of interest in dinosaur tracks might legitimately be described as a renaissance, and its extent may be gauged from the success of the First International Symposium on Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, held in May 1986 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque. The proceedings of that symposium, which attracted no fewer than 60 contributions from researchers in 14 coun~ tries, were published recently by Cambridge University Press under the title Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, edited by D.D. Gillette and M.G.

.Thulborn has tackled a difficult and frequently neglected discipline that has too often in the past suffered from lack of scientific vigour. His estimations of dinosaur's size, gait and speed from footprints will provide trackers with a useful repertoire of guidelines to apply and test; and for this reason alone specialists will want a copy of this book. - Nature;.this book will retain its usefulness and interest for many years, it needs to be readily available for a long period of time - for future dinosaur enthusiasts as well as today's students and `Dino Trailers'. - Fossil Collector;.this book is both concise and complete - suitable as a guide, reference, or supplementary text for the entire spectrum of interest from professional track enthusiast to the occasional track hobbyist. Its fifty-two pages of references at the end alone make it a remarkable resource. - Journal of Geological Education; the book here reviewed is a very good one. well bound and printed; the text-figures are well designed and excellently presented. text is lucidly written. It deserves to become a standard reference for all persons having a serious interest, not merely in the dinosaurs themselves, but in the Mesozoic world in general. - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology and Palaeoecology

1 Dinosaur fossils.- Body fossils.- Trace fossils.- The distinction between trace fossils and body fossils.- Trace fossils and dinosaur biology.- 2. The preservation of dinosaur tracks.- Simplified model.- Factors affecting preservation.- Unusual types of preservation.- Destructive factors.- Geological significance of footprint preservation.- 3. The search for dinosaur tracks.- Early discoveries.- Later discoveries.- 4. Dinosaur tracks in the field and laboratory.- Finding dinosaur tracks.- Site documentation.- Excavation and development.- Artificial casts, moulds and replicas.- Describing dinosaur tracks.- Illustrating dinosaur tracks.- Interpreting dinosaur tracks.- 5. Identifying the track-maker.- Sources of evidence.- Number and arrangement of footprints.- Footprint morphology.- Variation in footprint morphology.- Stratigraphic and geographic location of footprints.- Associated fossils.- 6. Principal types of dinosaur tracks.- Carnosaurs.- Coelurosaurs.- Ornithomimids.- Sauropods.- Prosauropods.- Small ornithopods.- Iguanodonts.- Hadrosaurs.- Stegosaurs.- Ankylosaurs.- Ceratopsians.- 7. Problematical and anomalous tracks.- Thecodontian or dinosaur?.- Ornithopod or theropod?.- Theropod or bird?.- Anomalies and pitfalls.- 8. Estimating the size of a track-maker.- Size of footprints and trackways.- The size of dinosaurs.- Definition and calculation of height at hip (h).- 9. Gaits of dinosaurs.- Criteria for defining and describing gaits.- Gaits of bipedal dinosaurs.- Gaits of quadrupedal dinosaurs.- Gaits of semibipedal dinosaurs.- 10. Speeds of dinosaurs.- Relative speeds.- Absolute speeds.- Alexander’s method.- Demathieu’s methods.- Maximum speeds.- 11. Assemblages of dinosaur tracks.- Randomly oriented trackways.- Trackway assemblages with preferred orientation.- Structure of dinosaur communities.- Structure of dinosaur populations.- References.