But the site also provides a wide assortment of fossilized bones and teeth of much smaller creatures, such as sharks, fish, frogs, lizards, turtles and crocodilians, providing a clearer picture of the overall ecosystem at that time. More recent work reveals that this ancient coastal plain of Arkansas was inhabited by a wide variety of freshwater and land animals, including long-necked dinosaurs, large carnivores, raptor-like carnivores and armored dinosaurs. Since the 1970s, thousands of sauropod and theropod tracks have been discovered in the area. While Arkansas is not traditionally considered a fertile source of Early Cretaceous fossils, this location has been unusually rich in them-including dinosaur tracks. The discoveries were highlighted in a recent paper published in PeerJ, titled 'A new vertebrate fauna from the Lower Cretaceous Holly Creek Formation of the Trinity Group, southwest Arkansas, U.S.' Celina Suarez, associate professor of geosciences at the U of A, served as primary author on the article, which pulls together decades of research in the area, known as the Holly Creek Formation. The discoveries serve both to underscore the variety of fossils found at this site, including dinosaurs, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles, and to reinforce the overall lack of variety of fossils found throughout North America during the Early Cretaceous, roughly 110 million years ago.

Carnivores dinosaur hunter