UPDATING AND REINTERPRETING THE DINOSAUR RECORD OF ITALY

The surprisingly rich dinosaur-track record of Italy, continuously growing up, is here updated and reinterpreted. The census of the resulting data (including also bone remains and others terrestrial habitat evidences) sheds some light upon the complex geodynamic history of this sector of the Central Mediterranean region, which becomes a key area in understanding the relationships between Laurasia and Gondwana during Mesozoic times. The Italian dinosaur track-bearing outcrops, almost all from marine environment, have been subdivided into two groups, the first including the Triassic-Jurassic ichnosites and the second the Cretaceous ones. The distribution of the ichnosites shows a sharp dissimilarity between those including Triassic-Early Jurassic ichnoassociations, present only in Northern Italy, and those with Cretaceous ichnoassociations, mostly present within peninsular Italy. Data suggest that, in the South Alpine domain, the Triassic-Early Jurassic fauna underwent a Pliensbachian l