10.30486/gcr.2021.1922052.1081

A Unique Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Locality in the Bakony-Balaton Geopark of Hungary (Iharkút, Bakony Mts.)

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  • Gabor Botfalvai1,
  • László Makádi 2,
  • Gáspár Albert3,
  • Attila Ősi 4,
  1. Hungarian Natural History Museum, Ludovika tér 2, Budapest, 1083, Hungary/ Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Paleontology, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Budapest, 1117, Hungary
  2. Mining and Geological Survey of Hungary, Stefánia út 14, Budapest, 1143, Hungary
  3. Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformatics, Budapest, Hungary, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest, 1117, Hungary
  4. Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Paleontology, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Budapest, 1117, Hungary
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Published in Issue 2021-10-11

Copyright (c) -1 Gabor Botfalvai, László Makádi , Gáspár Albert, Attila Ősi (Author)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Botfalvai, G., Makádi , L. ., Albert, G. ., & Ősi , A. . (2021). A Unique Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Locality in the Bakony-Balaton Geopark of Hungary (Iharkút, Bakony Mts.). Geoconservation Research, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.30486/gcr.2021.1922052.1081
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Abstract

Iharkút is a Late Cretaceous (Santonian) vertebrate-bearing locality in the Bakony Mountains of western Hungary, where productive and continuous paleontological excavations have been carried out in the last twenty years. Fieldwork resulted in a very rich and diverse assemblage of terrestrial and freshwater animals, including fishes, amphibians, turtles, lizards, a freshwater mosasaur, pterosaurs, crocodil-ians, dinosaurs, and birds. This abundance and diversity of fossil taxa contribute to understanding of European Late Cretaceous continental vertebrate faunas. Fur-thermore, the site’s paleogeographic position in the western Tethyan archipelago and its Santonian mean that it fills an important gap in the Late Cretaceous re-cord of continental vertebrates in Europe. The locality is among the geological high points of the Bakony-Balaton UNESCO Global Geopark. The fossils are interna-tionally important, which draws the attention of both scientific and non-scientific geopark visitors.

Keywords

  • Dinosaur,
  • Geopark,
  • Hungarian Dinosaur Foundation,
  • Hungarosaurus,
  • Vertebrate fossils
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References

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