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Geosciences
Special Issues
Middle Jurassic Dinosaurs in Context
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Middle Jurassic Dinosaurs in Context

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2017)

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Neil Donald Lewis Clark

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Interests: vertebrate palaeoichnology; Middle Jurassic dinosaurs, crocodiles, ichthyosaurs and insects; imaging techniques in palaeontology (MRI, CT, CSLM, UV, IR, microCT, drone imaging); geodiversity and geoconservation; stratigraphy; amber; Carboniferous crustacea

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Middle Jurassic dinosaurs are crucial to our understanding of the early evolution of many of the better known Cretaceous forms. Dinosaurs such as the sauropods diversified greatly at this time and the earliest coelurosaurians first appeared. Recently found material may help to pin down the origination date of some of the major theropod lineages that gave rise to tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurs and birds. This Special Issue of Geosciences examines the development of these important dinosaur lineages and places them within their contemporaneous environments in order to help contextualise the diversification and evolution of dinosaurs at this time. The aim is to include papers (original research articles, review articles, commentary, and case studies) looking at the evidence from both osteological, ichnological and other remains of the dinosaurs and their associated fauna and flora to build a more holistic picture of the Middle Jurassic interconnectedness.

For this Special Issue, we invite contributions broadly exploring Middle Jurassic environments and their dinosaurs, the spatial distribution of dinosaur groups and their evolution. Potential topics include changes in climate, palaeogeography, ecology, evolution, dinosaur locomotion, and diet. Papers may focus on the taxonomic description of individual specimens, the broader evolution of major groups, environmental and ecological contexts of dinosaurs in the Middle Jurassic, changes in associated fauna and flora, and the distribution of the different dinosaur groups although other relevant topics will be considered.

It is recommended that authors approach the Guest Editors at an early stage about possible submissions in order to verify the appropriateness of their potential contributions. If appropriate, an abstract will be requested, and the corresponding author required to submit the full manuscript online by the deadline.

Dr. Neil Donald Lewis Clark
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geosciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Middle Jurassic
  • Dinosaurs
  • Environment change
  • Evolution
  • Ichnology
  • Osteology
  • Taxonomy
  • Palaeogeography

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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Article
Perennial Lakes as an Environmental Control on Theropod Movement in the Jurassic of the Hartford Basin
by Patrick R. Getty, Christopher Aucoin, Nathaniel Fox, Aaron Judge, Laurel Hardy and Andrew M. Bush
Geosciences 2017, 7(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7010013 - 18 Mar 2017
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7655
Abstract
Eubrontes giganteus is a common ichnospecies of large dinosaur track in the Early Jurassic rocks of the Hartford and Deerfield basins in Connecticut and Massachusetts, USA. It has been proposed that the trackmaker was gregarious based on parallel trackways at a site in [...] Read more.
Eubrontes giganteus is a common ichnospecies of large dinosaur track in the Early Jurassic rocks of the Hartford and Deerfield basins in Connecticut and Massachusetts, USA. It has been proposed that the trackmaker was gregarious based on parallel trackways at a site in Massachusetts known as Dinosaur Footprint Reservation (DFR). The gregariousness hypothesis is not without its problems, however, since parallelism can be caused by barriers that direct animal travel. We tested the gregariousness hypothesis by examining the orientations of trackways at five sites representing permanent and ephemeral lacustrine environments. Parallelism is only prominent in permanent lacustrine rocks at DFR, where trackways show a bimodal orientation distribution that approximates the paleoshoreline. By contrast, parallel trackways are uncommon in ephemeral lacustrine facies, even at sites with large numbers of trackways, and those that do occur exhibit differences in morphology, suggesting that they were made at different times. Overall, the evidence presented herein suggests that parallelism seen in Hartford Basin Eubrontes giganteus is better explained as a response to the lake acting as a physical barrier rather than to gregariousness. Consequently, these parallel trackways should not be used as evidence to support the hypothesis that the trackmaker was a basal sauropodomorph unless other evidence can substantiate the gregariousness hypothesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Middle Jurassic Dinosaurs in Context)
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Review

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22 pages, 5688 KiB  
Review
A Comparison of the Dinosaur Communities from the Middle Jurassic of the Cleveland (Yorkshire) and Hebrides (Skye) Basins, Based on Their Ichnites
by Mike Romano, Neil D. L. Clark and Stephen L. Brusatte
Geosciences 2018, 8(9), 327; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8090327 - 31 Aug 2018
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5816
Abstract
Despite the Hebrides and Cleveland basins being geographically close, research has not previously been carried out to determine faunal similarities and assess the possibility of links between the dinosaur populations. The palaeogeography of both areas during the Middle Jurassic shows that there were [...] Read more.
Despite the Hebrides and Cleveland basins being geographically close, research has not previously been carried out to determine faunal similarities and assess the possibility of links between the dinosaur populations. The palaeogeography of both areas during the Middle Jurassic shows that there were no elevated landmasses being eroded to produce conglomeratic material in the basins at that time. The low-lying landscape and connected shorelines may have provided connectivity between the two dinosaur populations. The dinosaur fauna of the Hebrides and Cleveland basins has been assessed based primarily on the abundant ichnites found in both areas as well as their skeletal remains. In the two basins, the dinosaur faunas are very similar, consisting of non-neosauropod eusauropods, a possible basal titanosauriform, large and small theropods and ornithopods and europodan thyreophorans. The main difference in the faunas is in the sizes. In the Cleveland Basin, the ichnites suggest that there were medium and large theropods alongside small to medium sized ornithopods, whereas, in the Hebrides Basin, the theropods were from small to large and the ornithopods were medium to large. It is suggested that migrations could have taken place between the two areas during the Middle Jurassic. A tentative food chain from the herbivorous dinosaurs to the top predators can be inferred from the footprints. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Middle Jurassic Dinosaurs in Context)
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