Nouvelles données sur les Ichnites de dinosaures d'El Bayadh (Crétacé Inférieur, Algérie)

Mostefa Bessedik, Cheikh Mammeri, Lahcene Belkebir, Mahammed Mahboubi, Mohamed Adaci, Hakim Hebib, Mustapha Bensalah, Bouhameur Mansour and Mohammed E. H. Mansouri

Evidence of 350 Lower Cretaceous Dinosaur footprints is pointed out in El Bayadh area. Their preliminary study allow to distinguish four trackway assemblages which reveal vertebrate bipedal presence forms of tri-and tetradactylous Dinosauroïds (Assemblages 1-3) and quadrupidal Sauropoïd (Assemblage 4).

The analysis of their footprint biometric features will attribute the quadrupidal Sauropoïd form to Brontopodus ichnogenus which is weIl known in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. In retum and despite their age, the dinosauroïd forms were approached, temporarily, to Grallator and Eubrontes types.

The occurrence of the dinosaur traces (Theropoïd and Sauropoïd) constitutes, in the Lower Cretaceous, an important first step of the knowlege of the marshy Reptilian fauna which takes over, from the begining of the Secondary Era, a wide paleogeographie area on the Southem Tethyan margin.