Dinosuar bones from Haţeg Basin

Beginning of the 20th century, Ottokár Kadić discovered a rich and diverse Late Cretaceous vertebrate material around Vălioara in Haţeg Basin including fossils of several dinosaurs and the holotype remains of the unique Allodaposuchus crocodile. These vertebrate materials were collected from seven different sites and are now housed in the collection of the Mining and Geological Survey of Hungary. However, the collection was mixed after the 2nd World War and thus this unprovenanced material currently cannot be used for further palaeoecological investigations. Nevertheless, as a result of archive research, the excavation map used by Kadić has been found. It shows the exact positions of the seven sites around Vălioara, making it relevant and possible to match these localities with the historically collected specimens using geochemical methods. We will georeference and excavate these vertebrate outcrops following Kadić’s map and their sedimentological sections will be documented. In order to determine the geochemical differences and variation among the sites, bone fragments with known stratigraphic positions will be selected during the field work. Their TE compositions will be determined and used as independent proxies to assess the stratigraphic origin of the unprovenanced vertebrate fossils from the historic collections.