Sunnydown Farm Quarry (limestone) (Cretaceous of the United Kingdom)

Also known as Langton Matravers, tracksite

Where: England, United Kingdom (50.6° N, 2.0° W: paleocoordinates 41.5° N, 7.9° E)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Worbarrow Tout Member (Lulworth Formation), Middle Berriasian (145.0 - 140.2 Ma)

• Uppermost Lulworth Beds of Casey 1963, lying just below the Cinder Member, the base of which currently marks the Jr/K boundary in Southern England. Section originally published by Ensom 1985. Fossils come from 2.2 m below the Cinder Member. Equivalent to DB103 and WB117 (listed as WB112 in error).

•Cherty Freshwater Mbr = top of Worbarrow Tout Mbr

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: lacustrine - large; burrowed, shelly/skeletal, cherty/siliceous, carbonaceous wackestone and argillaceous, calcareous claystone

• Conditions of deposition generally brackish or freshwater, though there are occasional appearances of almost normal marine faunas. Clays may represent mud flats bordering an extensive freshwater lake. "Waterlogged and in reducing conditions."
• footprints were made in a fine-grained mixture of smectite and illite and are preserved as casts on the base of the overlying cherty biomicrite. West 1988: "well-laminated and rather contorted, calcareous, sandy, carbonaceous shale. It contains plant debris, numerous bivalve fragments, ostracod valves, some quartz sand grains and vertebrate teeth. Some silicified gastropods and spherulites of chalcedony are present. Much of the calcite is micritic."

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils, microfossils

Preservation: cast, trace

Collected by P. Ensom

Collection methods: quarrying, surface (float), surface (in situ),

• 19 footprints (9 forelimb, 10 hindlimb)

Primary reference: P. C. Ensom. 1987. A remarkable new vertebrate site in the Purbeck Limestone Formation on the Isle of Purbeck. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 108:205-206 [J. Alroy/E. Leckey/E. Leckey]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 28994: authorized by John Alroy, entered by Erin Leckey on 10.03.2003, edited by Matthew Carrano

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

unclassified
  -
Plantae indet.3 Haeckel 1866
"plant debris"
Deuteropoda
  -
Ostracoda indet.3 Latreille 1802 ostracod
Bivalvia
  -
Bivalvia indet.3 Linnaeus 1758 clam
Gastropoda
  -
Gastropoda indet.3 Cuvier 1795 snail
Reptilia
 Saurischia -
 Saurischia - Titanosauridae
 Saurischia - Faveoloolithidae
Faveoloolithidae indet.1 Zhao and Ding 1976 sauropod
 Ornithischia - Iguanodontidae
? Iguanodontidae indet.2 Bonaparte 1850 iguanodontid
 Avetheropoda -
Carnosauria indet.2 Huene 1920 carnosaur
 Ichnofossils -
cf. Thalassinoides sp. Ehrenberg 1944