A new dinosaur ichnofauna from Tunisia: Implications for the palaeobiogeography of peri-Adriatic carbonate platforms in the mid-Cretaceous

New dinosaur tracks discovered at the Chenini site, near Tataouine (southern Tunisia), are described. Isolated tracks as well as manus/pes couples of a quadrupedal dinosaur are referred to a hadrosaurian tracemaker and assigned to cf. Apulosauripus federicianus (Nicosia et al., 2000b), an ichnospecies originally described in the Upper Cretaceous carbonate platform deposits of southern Italy. This discovery thus represents the first report of hadrosaurian tracks in Africa. The occurrence of tracks similar to A. federicianus in Tunisia also represents the first evidence of the presence of comparable ichnofauna in the Upper Cretaceous of both northern Africa and the carbonate platforms of the Mediterranean area. Supporting these new data, the Cenomanian theropod ichnofauna recently described from southern Tunisia is here compared with coeval theropod tracks from the peri-Adriatic carbonate platforms. This comparison documents a number of shared morphological features, suggesting possible affinities of the trackmakers and supporting the hypothesis of a subaerial connection linking the carbonate platforms of the Mediterranean area to the northern margins of Africa in the mid-Cretaceous. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.