Highlands tracksite (Jurassic to of South Africa)

Also known as Highlands ichnosite, Highlands 1239

Where: Free State, South Africa (28.4° S, 28.3° E: paleocoordinates 40.6° S, 3.3° W)

• coordinate stated in text

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Lesotho Formation, Pliensbachian to Pliensbachian (190.8 - 174.1 Ma)

• lower part of formation

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: "floodplain"; massive, fine sandstone

• "a palaeoenvironment with sheet floods, temporary streams, very rare dunes, and scattered ephemeral ponds or lakes into which some detrital sediments accumulated, and earliest lavas flowed."
• "the upper-bedding plane of a ~ 5-cm thick, massive, very fine to fine-grained sandstone layer, which is underlain by a horizontally laminated sandstone bed...The tracks, which are all on the same, essentially horizontal sandstone surface, are associated with horizontal, slightly meandering invertebrate trails and casts of desiccation cracks that range in width from a few mm to a few centimetres."

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: trace

Collection methods: surface (in situ),

Primary reference: E. M. Bordy, A. Rampersadh, M. Abrahams, M. G. Lockley, and H. V. Head. 2020. Tracking the Pliensbachian-Toarcian Karoo firewalkers: trackways of quadruped and biped dinosaurs and mammaliaforms. PLoS One 15(1):e0226847:1-36 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 231002: authorized by Matthew Carrano, entered by Matthew Carrano on 28.07.2023

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Osteichthyes
 Therapsida -
Mammaliaformes indet.
Mammaliaformes indet. Rowe 1988 mammaliaform
trackways with 11 tracks ("Tracks B")
Reptilia
 Theropoda - Grallatoridae
Grallator sp.
Grallator sp. Hitchcock 1858 theropod
trackway wth 5 tracks ("Tracks C")
 Ornithischia - Delatorrichnopodidae
Afrodelatorrichnus ellenbergeri n. gen. n. sp.
Afrodelatorrichnus ellenbergeri n. gen. n. sp. Bordy et al. 2020 ornithischian
trackway with 25 tracks