Spring Canyon tracksite (Cretaceous of the United States)

Also known as Price River Coal Company mine

Where: Carbon County, Utah (39.7° N, 110.9° W: paleocoordinates 47.3° N, 80.4° W)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• outcrop-level geographic resolution

When: Blackhawk Formation (Mesaverde Group), Campanian (83.6 - 72.1 Ma)

• 3 horizons with tracks

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: mire or swamp; peat and siltstone

• delta and delta-strand swamps
• Tracks were developed in a peat-forming swamp. The sediment which filled in the original footprints is usually a light-colored fluvial shale or siltstone. The lower surfaces of most tracks are covered with a thin layer of hard vitreous coal or a fine-grained carbonaceous siltstone.

Size class: macrofossils

Preservation: cast, trace

Collected by L. Parker & J. Balsley

Collection methods: quarrying, surface (in situ),

• Thousands of footprints, 93 have been removed

Primary reference: L. R. Parker. 1983. The identity of coalified wood from coal mine roofs in the Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk Formation of Utah. Geological Society of America, Rocky Mountain Section, Abstracts with Programs 15(5):408 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano]more details

Purpose of describing collection: general faunal/floral analysis

PaleoDB collection 52856: authorized by Matthew Carrano, entered by Kaitlin Maguire on 24.08.2005, edited by Richard Butler and Matthew Carrano

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Gastropoda
  -
Gastropoda indet.3
Gastropoda indet.3 Cuvier 1795 snail
Bivalvia
  -
"Pelecypoda indet." = Bivalvia3
"Pelecypoda indet." = Bivalvia3 Linnaeus 1758 clam
Reptilia
 Ornithischia -
Dinosauropodes magrawii3, Dinosauropodes osborni3, Dinosauropodes bransfordii3
Dinosauropodes magrawii3 Lull 1932 ornithopod
Dinosauropodes osborni3 Lull 1932 ornithopod
Dinosauropodes bransfordii3 Lull 1932 ornithopod
 Ornithischia - Hadrosauridae
Hadrosauridae indet.3
Hadrosauridae indet.3 Cope 1869 hadrosaurid
 Ornithischia -
Ankylosauria indet.2
 Theropoda -
Theropoda indet.3
 Pterosauria - Pteraichnidae
cf. Pteraichnus sp.1
cf. Pteraichnus sp.1 Stokes 1957 pterosaur
 Coniferales - Cupressaceae
Cupressaceae indet.3
Cupressaceae indet.3 Gray 1822 cypress
Pinopsida
 Pinales - Taxodiaceae
Taxodiaceae indet.
Taxodiaceae indet. Saporta 1865
1Lockley et al. 1995; 2McCrea et al. 2001; 3Parker and Rowley 1989